West megadrought worsens to driest in at least 1,200 years

The Associated Press ^ | February 15, 2022 | By SETH BORENSTEIN (D-AP)

[Oldeconomybuyer]

The American West’s megadrought deepened so much last year that it is now the driest in at least 1,200 years and is a worst-case climate change scenario playing out live, a new study finds.

A dramatic drying in 2021 — about as dry as 2002 and one of the driest years ever recorded for the region — pushed the 22-year drought past the previous record-holder for megadroughts in the late 1500s and shows no signs of easing in the near future, according to a study Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The study calculated that 42% of this megadrought can be attributed to human-caused climate change.

“Climate change is changing the baseline conditions toward a drier, gradually drier state in the West and that means the worst-case scenario keeps getting worse,” said study lead author Park Williams, a climate hydrologist at UCLA. “This is right in line with what people were thinking of in the 1900s as a worst-case scenario. But today I think we need to be even preparing for conditions in the future that are far worse than this.”

Williams used 29 models to create a hypothetical world with no human-caused warming then compared it to what happened in real life — the scientifically accepted way to check if an extreme weather event is due to climate change.

[BiteYourSelf]

How can that be, I thought CO2 was on the up swing?🤔

[ClayinVA]

According to the farming Youtubers, they are under a pretty good snowpack in Minnesota too.

[mountainlion]

Mt Pinatubo had nothing to do with HAARP ... I was trying to show the industrial revolution was not the greatest scourge of greenhouse gases. It is not haarp related. I did work with a guy that worked with a smaller haarp type device.

So is 5g dangerous. I expect the dangers are over rated but I know little in this area.

[JD_UTDallas]

Oh yes lots of water from Lake mead look up the central Arizona project it’s a manmade river flowing to Phoenix from the Colorado basin. Arizona has second junior rights after Nevada but has the biggest cuts since the whole state of Nevada only gets 300,000 acre feet per year in wet years less in drought. California gets 7 million acre feet per year every year even when the other states have to conserve 50% or more. All that to grow alfalfa grass for cows in the deserts which is the largest single user of water in California five million acres feet of it. Almonds, and avocados both use gallons per fruit or nut. Almonds are two gallons per nut. Avocados are 75 gallons per lb of fruits. It is absolute insanity that California gets to drain that basin with zero cuts even in drought years. But that’s how the Colorado River compact was written by California for California with corruption in DC to get it passed in the Senate.

[JD_UTDallas]

You are right ice and ground water recharge are the only two stores of water that doesn’t end up back in the oceans nearly immediately. Ground water near the coasts flows by subsurface flows down hill to the coastlines and eventually out under the continental shelf back into the oceans it’s a lot slower than river transport. There are places you can still 50 plus miles offshore and hit fresh water under the sediments. Off shore Florida the ground water flows are so high they boil up to the surface miles off shore you can see the density difference and even drink the water in the middle of the boils. In the 1700 and 1800 sailors would look for those boils off shore to get fresh water to drink all over the Florida shelf, Cuba and the Bahamian banks. Ice is the other storage Continental ice sheets specifically they currently hold 20 % of the freshwater that is not in the oceans or ground water.

Pumping deep saline aquifers can cause subsidence at the surface we see this all over Midland basin where oil and brines are pumped up for frac fluids. Has a flat a pair of radar says you can get high rez inferometric images with cm vertical resolutions that show mass subsidence. That and the big sinks holes that periodically open up in that basin.

As to Mississippi water back when the USA was a can do engineering powerhouse the plan was to pump MS water up hill 3000+ feet to Texas and New Mexico. Check this.Mega engineering out.

https://www.twdb.texas.gov/publications/State_Water_Plan/1968/1968_Texas_Water_Plan.pdf

[nicollo]

Williams used 29 models to create a hypothetical world with no human-caused warming then compared it to what happened in real life — the scientifically accepted way to check if an extreme weather event is due to climate change.

I can guarantee that this "scientist" didn't exclude Native American slash & burning of all the forests across deciduous forests of North America.

[P.O.E.]

The worst megadrought. Didn’t know how good we had it with all the prior megadroughts. /s

[Trailerpark Badass]

Seth Borenstein, Climate reporter for the AP, just announced on Twitter that the AP is going to increase its “climate emergency” reporting, because of “grants.” Never said grants from whom. Kind of odd that a purportedly for-profit enterprise would receive “grants.”

[JD_UTDallas]

The solution is to trash the Colorado River compact and go to right of capture. Then Colorado has the bulk of the River water. Arizona has the salt river basin tributary and Nevada has the funds to buy water from either. California can desal on the coasts for LA and San Diego it’s also under 200 miles from the coast to the Central and imperial valleys close enough to pipeline desal seawater to them. You can’t grow.grass at desal water prices but you can grow high value crops like tomatoes,strawberries, avocados and lettuce. Without sending 7 million acres feet of water to California every year even at the historical averages of 4 to 7 million acres feet at Lake mead that’s plenty for Arizona and Colorado , Nevada has made it work with 300,000 max per year in a city the size of Las Vegas with 40 million visitors a year. Vegas is the world leaders in water conservation and recycling every drop that hits a sink or toilet in that basin is recycled to.drinking water back to Lake mead. The casino’s use less than 3% of Nevada’s total supply of 300,000 acre feet for 40+ million visitors per year in a shear feet engineering excellence. The casino’s also use shallow runoff water from private wells that’s unpotable for AC condenser use and fountains plus grass. No one comes close to Las Vegas in the USA only Israel recycles and reuses more water but they have three times the population of the Las Vegas Valley spread over ten times the area.

[markman46]

OK i went to wattsupwiththat.com and came away with this tid bit of information:

“The NCC paper itself appears to be decent enough. Tree ring analysis (of roof beams) from Southwestern archeology sites dating back to 800 (Chaco Canyon being an example) were spliced together with living tree ring cores to form a complete SW US regional wet/normal/dry picture spanning about 1200 years. That coniferous trees grow better annually in wet (wider rings) rather than dry (narrower rings) conditions is well established (unlike Mann’s treemometers).

The trees tell a story of 5 major Southwest US droughts since 800AD. The worst is at present; the next worst was a period lasting 23 years in the late 1500’s. To a reasonable person, this should mean these periodic western droughts have little to do with climate change. But that would not get the paper published in NCC.”

[DoughtyOne]

My uncle said there was this same kind of talk 1,200 years
ago. Back then they blamed it on buffalo farts.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Here’s info on the “climate grants”.

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4038491/posts

[Trailerpark Badass]

Pretty much what I expected.

[daniel1212]

It seems anything can be predicted or assigned to CC:

Climate Impacts in the Midwest

Precipitation is greatest in the eastern part of the Midwest and less towards the west.[1] Heavy downpours are already common, but climate change is expected to intensify storms and lead to greater precipitation across the entire region during this century. Annual precipitation has already risen by as much as 20% in some areas.[1] Projections of future precipitation indicate that heavy downpours are likely to occur primarily in winter and spring months while summers will become drier, especially in the southern portion of the region. - https://climatechange.chicago.gov/climate-impacts/climate-impacts-midwest

[daniel1212]

Just from one page of search returns.

2011 Extreme Weather and Climate Change: The Midwest Devastating deluges, record floods and deadly heat waves have raised the question of whether there’s a connection between these events and global warming. The bottom line answer is yes: ...Above-normal rain and melting snow caused record releases from upstream dams in Spring 2011. Credit: Columbia Missourian....More than 1,300 daily precipitation records were broken during April across the Midwest and South. For the month, 72 locations reported their rainiest day in any April on record and five of these stations set a new all-time record for the rainiest 24-hour period for any month, the National Climatic Data Center reported...

Lake Erie Algae Bloom Matches Climate Change Projections ... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lake... Aug 05, 2014 · An increase in heavy rainfall is already being seen throughout the U.S. The Midwest has seen a 37 percent increase in the amount of rain falling in heavy precipitation events since the late 1950s

What Climate Change Means for Michigan - US EPA https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/sites/... Heavy Precipitation and Flooding. Changing the climate is likely to increase the frequency of floods in Michigan. Over the last half century, average annual precipitation in most of the Midwest has increased by 5 to 10 percent.

For a flooded Midwest, climate forecasts offer little comfort March 29, 2019 Global warming has the potential to intensify the Earth’s water cycle, which will alter the quantity, frequency, intensity and duration of rain and snowfall. As my research and work by others has shown, all of these changes raise the risk of floods for Midwest states. ..These factors mean that climate change is likely to cause a disproportionate increase in heavy precipitation events in the Midwest, a trend that is already apparent when looking at historic climate data. From 1951 through 2013, my study found that light and moderate precipitation across the Midwest increased by about 1 percent per decade, while heavy precipitation increased by 4.4 percent per decade.

Did climate change cause Midwest flooding? » Yale by Samantha Harrington April 2, 2019.. Some of the root causes – like wetter weather and rapid spring warm ups – have become more likely due to climate change.

Record Rain Is Drowning Fields in the Midwest — Is It Climate Change? Heavy rains and flooding through the winter and spring have left fields across the Midwest too wet to plant. By Anna FunkJun 11, 2019 11:00 AM... It’s too soon to say whether this year’s crop and flood damages can be attributed to climate change. But one thing’s for certain: predictions for a warmer future have these areas slated for more of these extreme rainfall events. A map showing the 2019 rankings for regional precipitation. Higher numbers indicate more rain and 124 is the highest possible rank, meaning that this year saw the most rain since records began 124 years ago. (Credit: NOAA)

Prepare for more downpours: Heavy rain has increased across most of the United States, and is likely to increase further By Michon Scott Reviewed By Dan Barrie Published July 10, 2019 Updated July 6, 2021

[Glad2bnuts]

Burning oil or burning coal and trees to heat and cook. Which one is more efficient, therefore better for the environment? I am thinking modern society is massively better for the environment and the air. If people want to quit using so much water for farming, get rid of the ethanol for fuel program, it would also raise MPG for private cars, and give more corn for the animals so we can eat cheaper beef, pork and chicken.

[Glad2bnuts]

Too many human beings living in the desert southwest demanding water. Deport all illegal aliens, their children and the H1B workers and we would have no problem. Just subtract 100 million people from the Continental US. Let Vegas become a ghost town for all I care. It is a stupid idea, along with golf courses in S California, grass lawns, and swimming pools.

[Glad2bnuts]

The PTB in Cali ran water over their dams instead of building depth during the last rainy season. I am thinking they used the excuse “it is for the fish”. In truth, it was to cause a drought.

[Glad2bnuts]

The Cali freaks wanted to build a pipeline and take water from the Columbia and transport it south to them. Nope, not a good idea. They would end up sucking the water that is going out to sea and supporting native fisheries. If they need to get water from 2,000 miles away, they built in the wrong place. Let them dry up and fly away.

[JD_UTDallas]

You couldn’t be more wrong if you tried. First off California is the largest water user of the Colorado basin by far with 7 million acre feet per year in guaranteed access. In the entire state of California urban use is only 11% of the total and just over half of that is industrial and commercial use. So residential is only 5% of the total that’s a rounding error compared to agriculture use. Even if half the population is illegals that would mean only 2.5% is used by them and since illegals are not near half nice straw man attempt.

Vegas uses less than their allocated 300,000 acre feet per year and returns so much recycled water to Lake Mead every year they bank wanter against there 300,000 cap Vegas has banked ten years of water credits in Lake Mead this is why they just built their third straw to make sure they can access their already banked water once California drops lake mead to under the level where it can flow past Hoover dam. Ignorance like yours doesn’t help. California agriculture is the largest waster of water in the southwest they grow grass in the desert to feed Saudi Arabian cows using five plus feet of water per square foot of land area its obscene. But hey keep ranting about 5% that makes your side look smart and informed.

https://water.ca.gov/Programs/California-Water-Plan/Water-Portfolios