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200 Years Of Scorchitude: Professor Warns California To Brace For A "Mega-Drought"
Two years into California's drought and locals are repeating (mantra-like) "we've never seen anything like it." They are right, of course, since this is the worst period of rainlessness since records began... but if Cal Berkeley professor Lynn Ingram is correct, they ain't seen nothing yet. The paleoclimatologist fears, if very long-run history repeats, California should brace itself for a mega drought, as National Geographic reports, a drought that could last for 200 years or more.
California is experiencing its worst drought since record-keeping began in the mid 19th century, and scientists say this may be just the beginning. B. Lynn Ingram, a paleoclimatologist at the University of California at Berkeley, thinks that California needs to brace itself for a megadrought—one that could last for 200 years or more.
As a paleoclimatologist, Ingram takes the long view, examining tree rings and microorganisms in ocean sediment to identify temperatures and dry periods of the past millennium. Her work suggests that droughts are nothing new to California.
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"During the medieval period, there was over a century of drought in the Southwest and California. The past repeats itself," says Ingram, who is co-author of The West Without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climate Clues Tell Us About Tomorrow. Indeed, Ingram believes the 20th century may have been a wet anomaly.
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Unfortunately, she notes, most of the state's infrastructure was designed and built during the 20th century, when the climate was unusually wet compared to previous centuries. That hasn't set water management on the right course to deal with long periods of dryness in the future.
Given that California is one of the largest agricultural regions in the world, the effects of any drought, never mind one that could last for centuries, are huge. About 80 percent of California's freshwater supply is used for agriculture. The cost of fruits and vegetables could soar, says Cantu. "There will be cataclysmic impacts."
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So what is causing the current drought?
Ingram and other paleoclimatologists have correlated several historic megadroughts with a shift in the surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean that occurs every 20 to 30 years—something called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). The PDO is similar to an El Nino event except it lasts for decades—as its name implies—whereas an El Nino event lasts 6 to 18 months. Cool phases of the PDO result in less precipitation because cooler sea temperatures bump the jet stream north, which in turn pushes off storms that would otherwise provide rain and snow to California. Ingram says entire lakes dried up in California following a cool phase of the PDO several thousand years ago. Warm phases have been linked to numerous storms along the California coast.
"We have been in a fairly cold phase of PDO since the early 2000s," says Brian Fuchs, a climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center, "so the drought we are seeing now makes sense."
That said, scientists caution against pinning the current drought on the PDO alone. Certainly ocean temperatures, wind, and the weather pattern in the Pacific have contributed to the drought, says Nate Mantua, a professor in the department of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, where the PDO pattern was first discovered and named. "But it's more nuanced than saying the PDO did this." After all, as its name suggests, the PDO is decades in the making.
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http://articles.philly.com/1991-03-29/news/25790171_1_water-rationing-ma...
that didn't take long to find!!!!
"Weather-types are calling this phenomenon the "March Miracle" - a record- setting amount of snow and rainfall in many parts of the state that, following an unusually dry January and February, has greatly eased the severity of California's drought"
and that was a 5 year drought i might add.
We were in the Sequioia National Park when that weather event happened. 10 feet of snow in two days. It was stunningly beautiful.
says Ingram, who is co-author of The West Without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climate Clues Tell Us About Tomorrow.
LOL, okay, so i get it now....somebody is selling a book!!
When the San-Andreas fault finally lets loose, there will be a whole lot of people, wishing that their land, was as dry as a desert.
If there was a Fort Tejon-sized quake during a cold wet winter a lot of people would be migrating to Mexico.
Flakes and quakes....the dimbulb's handy label for California.
You inland squares are just jealous...you can't afford to live here, are too uptight, and likely are too obese to fit it.
The rest of the country doesn't want to live in Mexifornia's barrios with fat mexicans speaking Spanglish and they don't like the taste of yellow pee water either.
Doesn't this bimbo know that when we elected the annointed one that "this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal..."
The warm dry periods are filled with cold wet periods. I lived in Santa Barbara during their great late 80s if its yellow be mellow if its brown flush it down drought. The reservoirs were bone dry,the lawns dead (except the UCSB campus). Then, one year it rained like a mother fucker, what ever a mother fucker rain is. Ended the drought during a short series of storms. Reservoirs overflowing, toilets a flushing. You can have decade of "drought" even though you have individual winters of heavy rains.
Droel - tired of posting as 'tyler' ?
A section of Antartica could break off under the weight of the 25% increase in recent ice and snow. If so the resulting ice sheet would change the location of the equator and climate will shif and changet dramatically.
In the meantime a huge siphon hose could be run from the great lakes to SoCal. Not to worry BTFD.
Not to worry, there's a tax for that!
See Joe Bastardi... who has been monitoring Russian long term weather forecasts for a while. Russkies collectively projected a coming mini-ice age next 30 years (this now goes back before 2008...Putin seemed to come out of retirement based on this prediction many say - see the obvious.... Russia has Europe by the throat energy-wise...don't delete this Tylers).
For all we know this is one of the side variants of that prediction.
Oh, by the way, the Russkies are well-regarded long term weather forecasters ........and they secretly laugh at the bamboozle of Al Gore beyond what anyone here or at our glorious 'main stream news media' can imagine ................ and then there is Winter Soldier, 'I am not a certain ethnic person but really Boston Irish' John Kerry. Will someone please swiftboat this Hanoi Jane Fonda!
I know this is off topic but I did read that California had second record grape harvest 2012-13
Goddamn nature and science are LIBTARDS. Ignore them.
Goddam global warming nazis are LIBTARDS. Ignore them.
(global warming is a lie.....) So you still beleive the earth is flat, huh? wudda dullard
The error you make by assuming California is flat, as opposed to doing an accurate calculation taking into account the curvature of the Earth, iis only about 1% over a distance of 1000 miles. The Global Warming are lucky if there predictions are within 500% of reality.
Normal weather patterns; what's all the fuss, besides lettuce and cattle?
Might make the wine taste better.
Unfortanatly Most people in California don't realize the impact this drought will have on them. Then again, they don't realize the impact the Ponzi Scheme the FED and the 5 pimp, bailed out Banks will have on them either. I sit here in California wondering which one will end up worse? I live next to Folsom Lake and I ride my dirt bike out in places that is usually 40' under water. Things are dire to say the least. Last night I sat under a 40' tree that I usually ride my jet ski around? Yea we got a good storm last weekend but it didn't even put a dent in the situation. Everybody is thinking it will be ok? They have no clue what they will be facing come May. Sorry about your $50k landscaping and your pool? These were the good ol' days. Might just as well turn your pool into a skateboarding rink and kiss your water dependent landscape goodbye. Were talking a Castrophe, not a blip in your every day life. The San Joaquin Valley produces 60% of America's fruits and vegetables. This story is just making headlines, I was talking about it last thanksgiving. Glad to see the Jonny come latelys have finally inspired Tyler to take interest. Bottom line is California is screwed. We will see more turmoil this summer then most people can ever imagine, count on it!
"Sorry about your $50k landscaping and your pool?"
Maybe there will be mandatory water restrictions for people in NorCal who live near the Sacramento and American Rivers, but do you really think that the Democrats who run California will ever put water mandatory water restrictions on the millions of people who live in SoCal? No doubt the water flow will continue to flow from north to south no matter how dire the water situation becomes in the Sacramento area and in Northern California?
They already did! How about checking out the news from 3 weeks ago... Here let me help you with that
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-california-drought-zero-wate...
They'll still be washing their rides with the garden hose.
All that's needed is NEW water war's.
Trouble is SO-CALL will pay, and NO-CAL wants it for free, and CENTRAL-CAL wants it free for AG reasons.
But money talks, ... now the NO/CEN folk could dynamite the aqueducts and solve the problem.
Surely political, the real solution is 3 cali's, north, middle and south.
The NORTH get's to sell to AG FOR WHOLESALE PRICE, AND the SOUTH pay's up the nose for retail use.
Either way the 'water master' wins' all cuz he holds all the water rights.
*
I would really like CALI to split, and this is a DAMN good reason, but I might add it should go 4 ways, as east-CALIF, e.g. east of the Sierra's have their own water, and they could sell it to SO-CAL for $20/gallon.
Actually, yours is a great illustration of why the entire disUnited States should be allowed to go the way that Jefferson Davis and Lee wanted it to go in the first place, and why Abraham Lincoln's ugly face should be removed from Mt. Rushmore.
By now we would have at least half as many countries as the European Continent has, and be 1000% more self directed in those countries, instead of being dictated to by rich billionaires who seek one world in which they own everything and managed to make serfs of everyone else.
That's exactly why as I have been saying today, that SO-CAL will pay $500/month.
If you stand to lose a $50k yard, and make a $20k pool worthless, you will PAY.
No tribal bulllshit allowed when discussing a serious topic.
I knew there was a reason I hated vegetables. My antennae foresaw this and I was a beta adopter of No fucking Broccoli, cauliflower, or green beans.
Get my Kiwis from Italy, sold at Costco. My oranges come from Mexico. Bananas are fattening and can be totally dispensed with.
And we have so much snow melt coming in today and for at least a few years that we could easily fill all the swimming pools, irrigate the San Joa Valley and have enough left over for a 3 mile bobsled run in Orange County.
The more intransigent problem to be deal with is how Lord Blankfein is playing the drought, exploiting it for Goldman Sucks.
I wish Californians well but they must take responsibility for their bad and destructive political decisions. Climate changes due to the prevailing weather/oceanic idiosyncraticies need to be addressed without this retrogressive, political response that keeps them in this other worldly fantasy world that does not come to grips with the necessary decisions that need to prevail. Solve the problem or at least make an attempt to solve it. There is much intelligence/ technology they could explore and exploit if they just jettison their political bias
America is currently too removed from reality to be able to cope with this. They will just show us propaganda of waterfalls, lakes and mountain streams to prove California has no water problem. Then Obama will will pass a law that rain falls every day in California. Problem solved until the next elections.
Much of the Southwest has been, and continues to be, a desert. This article just confirms that man cannot outlast a fight with nature, no matter that land is cheap in the desert.
While farming in a desert, with man's ability to deliver water from afar, serves a social good, there are too many "Vegas" folies to confirm man has been sane. And the insanity continues with the coverup excuse of "global warming".
Land is cheap in the desert. Fools bought it. Will a nation bankrupt itself to continue the folly?
I lived near where the Anasazi once lived in SW Colorado for a few years, near Mesa Verde. There was a drought which affected the whole area and caused (possibly) the abandonment of the cliff dwellings. But, who can predict the WX? CA has a Mediterranean climate, so most of the rain I think is in Feb-Mar. We shall see. If it does not rain much this year, it may next year. One sure thing about the WX, it changes.
One thing you can be sure of is that politicians will Make.It.Worse.
The syfy fan in me thinks it is the radiation leaking from the Japanese reactors. I am waiting on Godzilla.
They forgot the scientist moto " more study is needed "
That is actually the denier motto. Like when we need "more study" to determine if smokong causes cancer.
Hi guys !
I repost something i wrote since I got no contribution on the previous entry about California:
"Is a search for a name for this disaster on ?
I suggest the "golden silicon bowl" or shortly the "Silicon Bowl" !
Mother nature hot super bowl is on the air !"
I would really appreciate if some people had creative ideas about coining a denomination for this.
Thanks!
& Ciao !
As long as there is enough water to water the golf courses in the desert, nobody will care.
Escape from LA Snake!
Sumting vely wong...
{eyes rolling}
We have all been assured way beyond reasonable doubt by the global warmers and climate change expert scientists that these changes in weather being experienced all over the world are a direct consequence of mankind and our filthy motor cars and our desire to fly in aeroplanes etc.
Am I to believe that Cal has suffered similar periods of extended drought long before motor cars and aeroplanes were ever invented??
That must mean that AGW is a giant con-trick & Climate Change is actually a function of Mother Nature.
Gosh!!!
Who'da thunk it.
{/eyes rolling}
WRONG.
Couldn't happen to a more deserving state.
Great book on water in the west--
https://www.google.com/search?q=cadillac+desert&oq=cadillac+des&aqs=chro...
I hope all of the fruits, nuts and vegetables don't get upset and leave the state.
Fort I live in the sticks and things are too expensive out here and people are moving away.
I used to be able to take a shit in my front yard now it's a challenge to take a fucking piss without hearing a car coming.
Over the years Californians have migrated to Colorado. Colorado has become the new California. Even the politicians are transformed.
Just at the center of that high is a plasma cloud created using the Haarp Antennae. At the same time thick conductive metal powder is dumped into the upper atmosphere to increase the power of the beam energy and to do double duty as a "seed" for rain. California's water is soaked up like a sponge and directed over Texas ranches where they say, "Them Californians are sure stupid, they never look up to see all them jets dumping that choking powder.
"If they did this to us, the Venerable Texas Air National Guard would scramble some F16's, shoot some down, and then ask Norad who authorized this, 'cause nobody I know voted for this, Yall."
"What the hell do I care about them Californians. Come to think of it, why does Jerry Brown let this continue? Oh, I see, He must be a team player."
0bozo has been in CA for the better part of a week now. Why doesn't The One who was going to "stop the seas from rising, etc. etc." just make it RAIN?
PS: and let them eat Delta smelt.
I'll bet Sarah Palin can see rain from her porch. Send Mama Grizzly to shoot up the drought!
California crisis so they need more Federal Obama sugar daddy money.They have infinite water right next to them. All they have to do is invest in desalination plants or get fresh water from the north.
Stop Making Sense!!
Farm welfare entitlements are bi-partisan. But the right especailly loves giving handouts to those who hire illegal aliens.
I'm going to miss those Castroville artichokes.
20 million illegal Mexicans with weed whackers have destroyed the climate.
Send em home.
Nah. Let's trade carbon credits instead.
Problem solved.
And man dreams of colonising Mars ... chuckle
The drought will last until 2030, as the Earth is moving into a mini ice age until then; at least according to Theodor Landscheidt and his ground breaking work "Sun Earth Man", which is not only the best, but I believe the only serious body of work that is devoted to the correlation of the cycle of our solar system with the Earth's weather. Obviously, it's not on the agenda for disclosure by our ruling elite as they have modern univerity science looking at the weather through a microscope, but the concept has been used in projecting weather forecasts in the commodities industry for decades by people in the know and I'm sure such is still the case today. This brand of meterologist uses the U.S. American Epherimus Nautical Handbook as their bible. If you're aware of it, you can see certain meterologist using the system in their daily forecasts. Tom Skilling in Chicago comes to mind as a practioner, which should be no surprise as Chicago is the home of the Board of Trade and CME now combined. This is where I learned about it from a meteorolgist named "Bernie", who worked exclusively for a few very wealthy fellows at the Merc, but has since passed away. Thought you'd like to know. www.electanewcongress.com SERFS UP AMERICA!
Obama causes MEGA DROUGHT!
LOUD NOISES!!!
Well if you believe that humans are putting more energy in to the atmosphere and that the ocean is absorbing that energy then maybe things could balance out or delayed a bit. Who knows?
Climatology is pure pseudo-science-
Kaynes accurately described the necessary actions to take long ago to address these draught conditions:
"When nature chooses not to supply the necessary rainfall within a market, the government should stand ready to borrow weather from the Central Bank and stimulate its own rainfall patterns..."
The Fed will loan the Treasury however much rainfall California needs to meet the shortfalls currently being generated in the private rainfall sector.
Either that, or they will dust off Bernankes' 2002 thesis and start dropping rain out of helicopters.
Psst...
Are you sure you didn't mean Keynes?
No, Kaynes... Ralph Kaynes - He's my neighborhood auto-mechanic.
One smart mother-fucker, that Ralph...
;-)