Posted on 04/05/2007 2:38:43 PM PDT by blam
Serious drought may strike western US
19:00 05 April 2007
From New Scientist Print Edition.
Michael Reilly
The western US may be heading towards a return to the dustbowl landscape that devastated the prairies of the 1930s, climatologists warn.
The horror of that period in the US was vividly described in John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath: thousands of people migrated from the parched American prairie – a dustbowl – and travelled west towards the "promised land". But the once-greener pastures are heading towards a drought more severe than the one that created the dustbowl of the 1930s.
For the past seven years, states in the western US have been drying up. Rising temperatures, declines in annual precipitation, and an increasing population have combined to leave major water sources running perilously low.
Now, a new analysis by Richard Seager at Columbia University in New York, US, and colleagues suggests the region is in the early stages of a profound shift in climate that may last for decades.
The team employed 19 major climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The models show that sea surface temperatures up to 40 degrees north and south of the equator will continue to rise. Storms will follow the warming waters into the higher latitudes, dragging behind them the dry air that currently settles over the world's deserts.
Big risks
The models predict prolonged drought conditions in western US, with rainfall reducing by about 3.6 centimetres each year until 2150. "We always think of drought as being an occasional thing, but it's not going to be like that in the future," says team member Ming Fang Ting. "It's going to be dry all the time."
(Excerpt) Read more at environment.newscientist.com ...
WE’RE DOOMED!!!!!!
The core of the Earth may blow up. The Sun is going to explode someday. We are all going to die. Gads!
This happens EVERY YEAR and has happened somewhere in the West every year since the West was settled. Parts of the West are arid regions. Would anyone think about putting out a press release announcing that the Gobi desert was going to experience a drought?
... but not to worry. More government will save us.
How in the world is a dustbowl going to happen when we have tens of millions of illegal immigrants using the southwest as their own private urinal?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is most likely made up entirely of people who believe in climate change. These people then selected 19 climate models which have major embedded assumptions that climate change will occur. The models therefore predict rising ocean temperatures and storms moving north, leaving the West with less rainfall. This whole study is an exercise in circular reasoning that starts with the belief that climate change is happening and that we can actually predict climate change with some accuracy.
The conclusions of this study probably have little validity, but this subject should generate a few billion dollars in research grants for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Especially when those pesky Santa Anna winds prevail!
LLS
Exactly! The precise, same, story is run every single year about this time. Damn, the mainstream media is pathetic!
ping
I thought with all of that global warming that we would have more moisture content in the air. Such should increase rainfall.
Hey, Life is a sexually-transmitted fatal disease — get used to it.....
That’s a damn good question. I know that they are pissin’ in the flowerbeds in the parking lot at my local Home Depot.
Get used to it. It is the only way to live. :^)
Congratulations on your pending nuptials BTW.
We got a fire warning here in Wake County today; I am really scared to death of fire.
And I am surrounded by trees.
Yes... And the solution is more money! Raise taxes! /s
How does the line go in the movie “men in black”? something like “there is ALWAYS a something or other ship about to blow up earth, the way these people get on with their lives is they just dont know about it!!!
Fine, they can have some of our rain and floods.
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