Heatwaves

[Luther Blissett]

I walked to the end of my block and noticed a bunch of peaches on the sidewalk. I looked up, and there was a peach tree in the neighbor's front yard, full of perfectly ripe peaches. Check my location.

One Swallow Does Make a Summer: Extreme Weather Events Are Linked to Climate Change
During my weekly conversation with my sister I told her about the unusual searing heat this June, the problems of power cuts and how we are coping in Delhi. She, in turn, told me that in Washington, D.C., where she lives, there was a terrible storm that damaged her roof and uprooted trees in her garden. She was fortunate that she still had electricity, because most houses in the city were in the dark. She also said it was unbearably hot because the region was in the grip of an unprecedented heat wave. Both of us, living across the oceans, in different countries, with vastly different circumstances, were similarly placed.

Is this, then, what the future holds for us -- a changing weather that has no boundaries or preferences? And why are we still so reluctant to make the connection between weather events and a changing climate?

This year, like most others, has seen unusual and extreme weather events. In Britain, where weather is always the subject of conversation, it became even more so. The Diamond Jubilee celebrations for the queen were an almost washout, while the Olympic torch's journey through Britain has been hit by rain and storms. West Yorkshire has been flooded and its people evacuated (this is the third flood in a month). This time it has had one month's rain in three hours. The country's Met Office says rainfall records have been broken. This June is the wettest since 1910. In Russia, flash floods have claimed the lives of 174 people. In Colorado, as I write, wildfires are ravaging land.

One swallow does not make a summer. But when unusual, extreme weather events begin to happen with increased intensity and frequency, they should make us ponder. In the U.S., for instance, more than 4,000 heat records have been broken this year. The rate at which these extreme events are striking is not normal.

One may ask: How does the world measure the "increased" frequency of extreme weather? After all, weather is always variable. Meteorological departments across the world keep records of changing weather events and patterns. Their records can point out similar events in the past when there was a similar cloudburst or frost or cyclone or freak snow. How does all this add to climate change? The fact is, change will happen in our present and our future. Since the world is only now beginning to see the impacts of rising temperature, data over several years does not exist to establish a trend in extreme weather events. Science, at best, can use a model to predict impacts of global temperature rise on climate.

Then there is the next set of questions. Even if extreme events are now being seen and recorded, how does one know this relates to human-made emissions? All this is further complicated by the fact that multiple factors affect weather and another set of multiple factors affects its severity and impact. In other words, the causes of devastation following extreme events -- like droughts or floods -- are often complicated and involve mismanagement of resources and poor planning.

For instance, we know floods -- currently ravaging parts of Assam and Bihar in India -- are caused by unusually high rainfall. But it is also clear we have destroyed drainage in floodplains through utter mismanagement. We built embankments believing we can control the river only to find the protection broken. Worse, we built habitations in floodplains.

This complication hurts people but helps climate deniers. They have a field day saying there is no link between variations in weather and climate change. For instance, when Washington, D.C., which is burning in heat today, had an equally extreme winter this year, a Republican senator known for his strong views against climate change built an igloo in a shopping mall. This was to mock climate change believers because it was cold, not hot. He clearly could not read the signs. And he is not alone. U.S. media has been squeamish about making the connection between extreme weather events and climate change. It is difficult to say whether this is because the climate skeptics have got to them, or because they are unable to unravel the nuances of scientific messages. This when there is more evidence now that the events of today are confirming the predictions of scientific models. In other words, what we had dreaded is coming true.

Therefore, we know that human influence has loaded the weather dice to make a particular event more likely. The deck is stacked against us. We will see more impacts of a changing climate in extreme, variable and devastating weather events. Science is now certain. Why are we still hedging our bets?

Most people don't understand how power works.

[NeonLX]

I posted this in the climate change poll thread as well, but I'd like to repost it here as well:

It hasn't rained in 6+ weeks around here (upper midwest), and we are supposed to be at the peak of corn pollination right now. It ain't gonna happen with the current brutally high temps and total lack of moisture. The *entire* corn crop in this state (along with soybeans, cherries and other crops), as well as the crops in much of the rest of the country, are going to be a complete bust. The loss for farmers will be bad enough, but the huge spike in food prices and other products based on these crops is going to be tremendous--and have a major shock on the economy. It scares the hell out of me.

I'm glad I'm no longer raising crops for a "living"...but we are all going to take a major hit from this.

[wintler2]

Lessons from 2012: Droughts, not Hurricanes, are the Greater Danger

Posted by: Dr. Jeff Masters, 3:34 PM GMT on November 16, 2012 +31

The colossal devastation and loss of life wrought by Hurricane Sandy makes the storm one of the greatest disasters in U.S. history. The storm and its aftermath have rightfully dominated the weather headlines this year, and Sandy will undoubtedly be remembered as the most notable global weather event of 2012.

But shockingly, Sandy is probably not even the deadliest or most expensive weather disaster this year in the United States--Sandy's damages of perhaps $50 billion will likely be overshadowed by the huge costs of the great drought of 2012. While it will be several months before the costs of America's worst drought since 1954 are known, the 2012 drought is expected to cut America's GDP by 0.5 - 1 percentage points, said Deutsche Bank Securities this week. “If the U.S. were growing at 4 percent, it wouldn’t be as big an issue, but at 2 percent, it’s noticed,” said Joseph LaVorgna, the chief U.S. economist at Deutsche. Since the U.S. GDP is approximately $15 trillion, the drought of 2012 represents a $75 - $150 billion hit to the U.S. economy. This is in the same range as the estimate of $77 billion in costs for the drought, made by Purdue University economist Chris Hurt in August.

While Sandy's death toll of 113 in the U.S. is the second highest death toll from a U.S. hurricane since 1972, it is likely to be exceeded by the death toll from the heat waves that accompanied this year's drought. The heat waves associated with the U.S. droughts of 1980 and 1988 had death tolls of 10,000 and 7,500 respectively, according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, and the heat wave associated with the $12 billion 2011 Texas drought killed 95 Americans. With July 2012 the hottest month in U.S. history, I expect the final heat death toll in the U.S. this year will be much higher than Sandy's death toll.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMa ... rynum=2296

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How did the corn turn out, NeonLX? The grains croppers west of me have been hit by a v.dry winter, most still got some harvest thanks to stubble retention and direct drilling. Those practices are now used by >70% of broadacre croppers on drier country IIRC, amazing takeup over last 30 years here. The press.air seeders however are v.expensive & complex..

[Iamwhomiam]

November 16, 2012
Dust Bowl Revisited
Janet Larsen

On October 18, 2012, the Associated Press reported that “a massive dust storm swirling reddish-brown clouds over northern Oklahoma triggered a multi-vehicle accident along a major interstate…forcing police to shut down the heavily traveled roadway amid near blackout conditions.” Farmers in the region had recently plowed fields to plant winter wheat. The bare soil—desiccated by the relentless drought that smothered nearly two-thirds of the continental United States during the summer and still persists over the Great Plains—was easily lifted by the passing strong winds, darkening skies from southern Nebraska, through Kansas, and into Oklahoma.

Observers could not help but harken back to the 1930s Dust Bowl that ultimately covered 100 million acres in western Kansas, the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles, northeastern New Mexico, and southeastern Colorado. Yet when asked if that was the direction the region was headed, Oklahoma’s Secretary of Agriculture Jim Reese was unequivocal: “That will never happen again.”

In the early decades of the twentieth century, earnest settlers of the semi-arid Plains, along with opportunistic “suitcase farmers” out to make a quick dollar, plowed under millions of acres of native prairie grass. Assured that “rain follows the plow,” and lured by government incentives, railroad promises, and hopes of carving out a place for their families, these farmers embraced the newly available tractors, powerful plows, and mechanized harvesters to turn over the sod that had long sustained Native American tribes and millions of bison.

The plowing began during years of rain, and early harvests were good. High wheat prices, buoyed by demand and government guarantees during the First World War, encouraged ever more land to be turned over. But then the Great Depression hit. The price of wheat collapsed and fields were abandoned. When the drought arrived in the early 1930s, the soils blew, their fertility stolen by the relentless wind. Stripped of its living carpet, freed from the intricate matrix of perennial prairie grass roots, the earth took flight.

Clouds as tall as mountains and black as night rolled over the land. Regular dust storms pummeled the homesteaders; the big ones drew notice when they clouded the sun in New York City and Washington, DC, even sullying ships hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic. Dunes formed and spread, burying railroad tracks, fences, and cars. “Dust pneumonia” claimed lives, often those of children. People fled the land in droves.


Liberal Kansas Dunes, 1936Credit: Arthur Rothstein, Library of Congress

In The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan describes the topsoil loss, how a “rich cover that had taken several thousand years to develop was disappearing day by day.” The sodbusters had quickly illuminated the dangerous hubris in the 1909 Bureau of Soils proclamation: “The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possesses. It is the one resource that cannot be exhausted; that cannot be used up.” The rechristened Great Plains looked like it would revert back to its original name: the Great American Desert.

When a series of dust storms reached far-flung Washington, DC, in the spring of 1935, a reluctant Congress was finally convinced to allocate resources to help stabilize the soil. With government subsidies and direction from the newly created Soil Conservation Service, practices were introduced to help hold down the earth. Grasses were replanted; shelter belts of trees were planted to slow the persistent winds; contour farming or terracing was used to farm in line with the natural shape of the land; strip cropping was used to leave some protective cover on the soil; and crop rotations and fallow periods allowed the land to rest.

While some of the Dust Bowl land never recovered, the settled communities becoming ghost towns, many of the once-affected areas have become major food producers. By 1933 wheat production in Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado was slashed by nearly three-quarters from its 1931 high of 411 million bushels, taking until 1947 to reach that level again. In 2012, the wheat output of these four states exceeds 700 million bushels, a third of the U.S. wheat harvest.


Dust Storms Baca County, Colorado 1930sCredit: D.L Kernodle, Library of Congress

After World War II, well-drilling and pumping technologies allowed farmers to tap into the Ogallala aquifer, a vast reservoir of water beneath the Plains, stretching from southern South Dakota through the Texas Panhandle. Irrigation expanded, with center-pivot sprinklers creating the green circles overlain on brown squares that are familiar to anyone who has flown over the central United States.

In recent decades irrigation has[/right] allowed the traditional Corn Belt to move westward onto drier lands. Kansas, for instance, sometimes called “the Wheat State,” harvesting one-sixth of the U.S. crop, now produces as much corn as it does wheat. The wheat is primarily rainfed, but more than half the corn is irrigated.

As extraction of the underground water has increased, however, water tables have fallen. The depletion is particularly concerning in the Central and Southern Plains where there is virtually no replenishment of the aquifer from rainfall, foreshadowing an end to the use of this finite resource. In the former Dust Bowl states, irrigation had its boom, but in many areas it is beyond its peak. With wells going dry, some farmers have returned to the more-common rainfed wheat farming, which typically yields far less than with irrigation; others have gotten out of wheat all together.

In Kansas the average drop in the water table is 23 feet (7 meters), but drops of 150 feet or more have been reported. The fall in water tables is even greater in the Texas Panhandle. Statewide, Texas’ irrigated area is down more than 20 percent from its high nearly 40 years ago. Only recently, after the water table fell fast during the back-to-back droughts, have limits been placed on withdrawals from individual wells there to slow the depletion. According to scientists at the University of Texas at Austin and the U.S. Geological Survey, if current rates of extraction continue, irrigation over a third of the southern High Plains will be untenable within 30 years.

Beyond the farm, climatologists are making it clear that the recent droughts are exactly the sort of event predicted to come more frequently as the planet heats up. So rainfed crops are in trouble, too. Models agree that with the global warming in store absent dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, much of the western United States—from Kansas to California—could enter into a long-term state of dryness, what physicist Joseph Romm has termed “dust-bowlification.”

With soil conservation measures in place, when drought revisited the Plains in the 1950s, the mid-1970s, the early 2000s, and again in 2011-2012—when Texas and Oklahoma baked in their hottest summers on record—a full-blown Dust Bowl did not develop. But will the ground hold forever? The United States is by far the world’s leading grain exporter; thus the fate of the nation’s “breadbasket” matters for food prices, and food security, around the globe.


Center-Pivot Irrigation, ColoradoCredit: Dan L. Perlman, EcoLibrary.org

While our understanding of and respect for the[/left] soil is greater now than it was at the turn of the last century, erosion still exceeds new soil formation on most acres. The combination of higher temperatures, prolonged drought, and irrigation limitations turns the prospects for continued large-scale crop production on the Plains grim. In case going through the worst recession since the Great Depression was not enough to remind Americans of hard times in the country’s past, climate change and the pressures of population and consumption growth pushing farmers to produce ever more food on limited land will make it harder to avoid a repeat of history.

Janet Larsen is the Director of Research for the Earth Policy Institute.

[Iamwhomiam]

http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/
Flash video at link

THE DUST BOWL chronicles the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, in which the frenzied wheat boom of the "Great Plow-Up," followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation. Vivid interviews with twenty-six survivors of those hard times, combined with dramatic photographs and seldom seen movie footage, bring to life stories of incredible human suffering and equally incredible human perseverance. It is also a morality tale about our relationship to the land that sustains us—a lesson we ignore at our peril.

Premieres November 18 and 19, 2012; 8:00–10:00 p.m. ET on PBS

[Luther Blissett]

If you’re 27 or younger, you’ve never experienced a colder-than-average month



…With the average temperature on Earth in October becoming the 332nd consecutive month at a higher-than-normal mark, we’re defining the new normal for a whole generation.

And that’s not a “new normal” that we should be okay with. Because a warming Earth with frequent droughts and supercharged storms could make Hurricane Sandy look like an afternoon sprinkle.…

[Ben D]

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/

The time series shows the combined global land and marine surface temperature record from 1850 to 2011. According to the method of calculation used by CRU, the year 2011 was the twelfth (see footnote) warmest on record.

[Hugo Farnsworth]

An event I never heard about until now:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/21/australian_fire_tornado/

A firestorm that occurred in Australia in 2003? Evidently, mum's the word. Sheesh, that scares me more than Superstorm Sandy.

[NeonLX]

Corn here in WI turned out better than I would have expected, though it was far from a bumper crop. Figures I've seen show about a 15-20% reduction in yield this year. Lots of puny ears and smaller grains on the plants that did mature.

Oddly enough, we experienced a significant amount of mold in the crops this fall because it finally rained about a month before harvest. The kernels didn't finish up quickly enough and that led to mold. Go figure...

[Luther Blissett]

Both the fall foliage and the apples are extraordinary in the mid-Atlantic region this month and last.

[wintler2]

Corn here in WI turned out better than I would have expected, though it was far from a bumper crop. Figures I've seen show about a 15-20% reduction in yield this year. Lots of puny ears and smaller grains on the plants that did mature.

Oddly enough, we experienced a significant amount of mold in the crops this fall because it finally rained about a month before harvest. The kernels didn't finish up quickly enough and that led to mold. Go figure...

Great, glad theres some bright spots. Any treatment for mould at that stage of crop? Here sheep prices have crashed and exported hay is where money is being made (reversal since last year). crops that survived the dry winter start have been saved by late rain.

An event I never heard about until now:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/21/australian_fire_tornado/

A firestorm that occurred in Australia in 2003? Evidently, mum's the word. Sheesh, that scares me more than Superstorm Sandy.

New discovery i think, tho there have been anecdotal accounts, and its established that fire fronts can make their own winds. Our 09 fires (200 dead, several towns obliterated) recalibrated Vic govt advice to households for extreme or catastrophic fire danger days (=heatwaves, like the record one we had in Jan-Feb 09, topped by record 46.7C / 116F on the day everybody died) its now basically: 'RUN!", i.e. evacuate in early morning to safe areas, regardless of whether theres an actual fire or not. Great that covers their backs, but few will do it, and unholy chaos will reign, as usual.

[Nordic]

Both the fall foliage and the apples are extraordinary in the mid-Atlantic region this month and last.

Send some of them apples out this way (Southern California). I can't seem to find any good apples this year. They're all terrible. I have no idea why.

[Luther Blissett]

Both the fall foliage and the apples are extraordinary in the mid-Atlantic region this month and last.

Send some of them apples out this way (Southern California). I can't seem to find any good apples this year. They're all terrible. I have no idea why.

Probably for the same reason ours are so good — because 2012 will be the hottest calendar year on record, which means your growing regions were a lot hotter and drier than ours. Pennsylvania Dutch country produces pretty good apples normally, but this year's honeycrisps and galas were astoundingly good-tasting, hearty, and abundant. Every farmer's market and grocer was overfilled with apples in about 2-3 dozen varieties and still are.

Tomatoes were also good earlier in the season, and wild-grown persimmons and pawpaws are looking pretty good right now, though I haven't tried them.

[wintler2]

WA ocean heatwave linked to shark attacks
The West Australian Department of Fisheries says it will conduct further research on a marine heatwave that has been linked to a recent spate of fatal shark attacks in Western Australia.

Scientists say the unprecedented heatwave occurred off the WA coast between 2010 and 2011, and could be responsible for declining fish stocks and increased shark activity.

Ocean temperatures rose up to five degrees last summer, and the Department says that has led to pockets of cooler water developing near the coastline and this may be causing sharks to move closer to shore.

The Department's Rick Fletcher says fisheries will now conduct further research on the heatwave to find out its long-term effects on fish stocks and shark activity. "Two years post that initial heatwave, what's happened both to the stocks but also what's happened to the oceanographic conditions, have they returned?" he said.
"Or has that change dissipated over the past two years."

There have been five fatal shark attacks along the WA coast in the past two years, which have prompted a raft of research aimed at trying to better understand the animals.

[Luther Blissett]

After a relatively cold October and November here in the mid Atlantic region, December has been feeling pretty warm. I would say that about 14 out of the last 21 days here have been foggy, with the fog not lifting throughout the entire day in some cases. It may seem like a trite observation, but it's unusual enough to be notable for this area and must be tied in with the warmth.

I can't wait to see what the data says globally for 2012. It is assuredly the hottest year on record, but will almost definitely be an extreme outlier — not just "slightly warmer," but significantly so.