This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1451377
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1451377
Well, we have had a LOT of snows this year in Albuquerque, and as I speak, it’s still coming down from last night. One week, it snowed on four separate days! I don’t know how much actual water/precipitation the snows have amounted to, however.
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We’ve had weeks and weeks of rain in California because of something called an atmospheric river. Today and for the last few day it’s been sunny and mild with rain predicted not until Sunday. The drought has lessened but it’s not over, never will be but there’s also been historic snow pack which will help lessen the drought.
Anyway I’m running water and flushing and watering plants without any guilt.
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Here in Colorado, it only snowed twice in Feb.
Once for 13 days, the second for 15.
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With something like climate, the trends aren’t visible for quite a few years. Any single year, or short succession of years, can be an outlier in the overall trend.
This year, we in Northern California are having heavy rains in the form of an ongoing series of intense deluges rather than the sustained milder rains with periodic interruptions that we formerly saw.
And, we are having another “atmospheric river” forecast for next week.
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Although the atmospheric rivers are terrifying and impressive, the question is whether that water ends up recharging aquifers. If it just goes right back into the Pacific, a lot of damage for not much good. (And of course all that subsidence in the central valley is pretty much aquifers that can’t be recharged because their pores have been mashed flat…)
While I’m being pessimistic, seems like worst case for fire might be a wet spring with lots of new growth and then a hot, dry summer where much of that growth turns to tinder. 
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Best get started on raking.
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Goats, will be your friend.
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Until the goats catch fire…
They are beasts from hell, after all.
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Only if they walk upon the land on two feet, instead of the four that God gave them.
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Or when they stare at me with those creepy eyes while chewing on something I need.
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As I expect the author is well aware, the term “drought” applies generally to a weather cycle, which can last for some years. But the expectation is that precipitation will one day come again and provide relief. And indeed, this winter’s snows are welcome, here in Colorado where I work on water issues, focused on the Rio Grande, which has many similar challenges to the Colorado River, as do most Western rivers. In our conversations, we have increasingly turned to describing our long-term situation with words such as “aridification” and “climate change” rather than “drought.”
As Colorado Water Center at Colorado State University’s Senior Water and Climate Scientist, Brad Udall states, “Droughts are temporary, while aridification is not. Aridification puts us on a path to a very different climate that will continue until we stop greenhouse gas emissions.” This recent interview with Udall (see: https://magazine.csusystem.edu/2023/02/13/rapid-decline/) discusses the many nuances and massive challenges facing us.
And we need to define our situation ever-more-accurately if we are going to develop the needed solutions across the spectrum of hydrology, land and water management, legal and inter-state issues, climate change, impacts on agriculture, economies, wildlife, carbon and water sequestration capacity of landscapes, forest and rangeland health, and much more. We are far beyond a drought and facing deeper and longer lasting challenges that require deeper and longer lasting solutions.
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One can help mitigate the drought and fires by planting native. Endogenous people burned regularly to get rid of tree samplings, enrich the soul and kill weeds. Active have deep roots that retain more moisture and survive a fire.
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I read another piece earlier today and Lakes Powell and Mead are still in trouble. Secondary pools should be helped, especially in California. The problem is really demand. It is just up all over the west. The fear is people in the west are going to think the drought is really broken and the water problem is over when it really hasn’t ended.
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Clearly the pattern is for a decrease in water in the West over the past 20 years. Expecting that trend to magically change isn’t smart planning-wise; California and other western states and the Federal government need to plan for less water across the board in the West. Let’s hope that we’ve got better than know-nothings doing water management planning into the near and long term future.
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Here’s the ‘short’ answer.
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I think you mean ‘shoveling’.
I said many years ago that we’re into ‘climate extremes’, meaning, Drought/Flood/Drought/Flood, and I said it based on the scientific information that was available at that time. Things have become way more extreme since then.
When the Jetstream becomes stagnant due to Arctic warming, and the temperatures between the polar regions and mid latitudes start to equalize, the Jetstream will stall out and meander. Weather patterns get stuck causing extreme droughts and floods. That’s what’s happening.
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Great, useful comment. Perhaps it is time we started redefining or refining terms we use like “drought” and start using words like “aridification” in many contexts.
My only thought or hesitation is this: as was pointed out in another comment by “libthinker”: “With something like climate, the trends aren’t visible for quite a few years. Any single year, or short succession of years, can be an outlier in the overall trend.”
Our human lifespans are too short to really be good indicators of permanent climate change. Of course the majority consensus of scientists today is that we are headed to a permanent climate change based on CO2 levels at unprecedented levels–and if your reference point starts 30 years ago, it is easy to see why this was easy to accept.
But I am now old enough to remember that in the early 1980s experts were worried about a global cooling. The Great Salt Lake had risen to levels that they had to put sand bags along I-80 to keep it from being flooded. Lake Mead and Powell were both full–dangerously full in fact–Glen Canyon Dam nearly burst and the excess water tunnels around the dam became clogged with debris; Lake Mead also had to use its overflow tunnels first used when the dam was constructed to keep water from overflowing the dam.
While I am not trying to be a contrarian to the conventional wisdom of experts today–I see what is happening with my own eyes–there seems to be a complete assumption and resignation by experts that this is only going one direction. The CSU researcher talks about “aridification”, as though a trend to the opposite direction is a complete impossibility. Of course pointing this out makes one at risk for being called a climate denier. But none of us are going to be around enough centuries to know the final verdict. There are factors we may not yet understand yet which could come into play and in 40 years we’ll be again worried about global cooling and another ice age.
The extended and destructive “dust bowl” drought of the 1930s eventually subsided, and then we had some very cool and wet years in between the present 30 year trend to warmer and drier conditions that has been very acute the last three years.
In earth’s history there have been big changes in climate–even if we just look at the last 50 million years–long before humanoids and their prodigious CO2 production use were ever on the scene, which caused numerous ice ages and their retreats.
Thus when discussing long term climate changes, I merely think we need to allow for the possibility that what is the consensus view today might look very different 50 years from now if what actually happens isn’t what everyone expects today will happen. Because that has happened before.
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This, Indeed!
By no means ungrateful for the current quenching, but a bone dry June and July of 95-100 degree heat, and it gets Ugly, Really quick. We’ve been getting more of those.
Upside: Surface groundwater remains for quite a while in the summer, so flora isn’t necessarily the bone dry torch of say, 2020.
Keep it coming! Rain in the summer, Please/Thank You!
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