Sunday, August 12, 2012

Megadrought Predicted For US West

First it was the Koch brothers' skeptic joining in the warnings about climate change.

Now three scientists have data predicting what they call megadrought in the US for years to come, writing in the Sunday New York Times:

BY many measurements, this summer’s drought is one for the record books. But so was last year’s drought in the South Central states. And it has been only a decade since an extreme five-year drought hit the American West. Widespread annual droughts, once a rare calamity, have become more frequent and are set to become the “new normal...”

Future precipitation trends, based on climate model projections for the coming fifth assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, indicate that droughts of this length and severity will be commonplace through the end of the century unless human-induced carbon emissions are significantly reduced. Indeed, assuming business as usual, each of the next 80 years in the American West is expected to see less rainfall than the average of the five years of the drought that hit the region from 2000 to 2004...

These climate-model projections suggest that what we consider today to be an episode of severe drought might even be classified as a period of abnormal wetness by the end of the century and that a coming megadrought — a prolonged, multidecade period of significantly below-average precipitation — is possible and likely in the American West...
Many Western cities will have to fundamentally change how they acquire and use water... Some regions will become impossible to farm because of lack of irrigation water. 

5 comments:

AlGore is right!!! said...

Yes!
Yes!
Yes!
I love it when AlGore is right!!
More droughts prove AlGore is right!!
Mega droughts prove AlGore is MEGARIGHT!!!!
Once again, proof positive that AlGore is right!!
I love it when AlGore is right, because that just proves that I AM RIGHT when I think that AlGore is right!!
Yes, the American southwest will burn up and dry away because this proves that AlGore is right!!
And I AM RIGHT !!
RIGHT !!
RIGHT !!
RIGHT !!
But not right like those right wing nut, nut jobs who deny science!
Not like Paul Ryan!
Not like Paul Ryan, the right wing nut job who denies science and is going to get Mitt Romney elected and then they will kill the planet!!
SAVE THE PLANET!!!
Save the planet by making models to burn up the southwest to prove that AlGore is right so people will have to know that he is right so they will stop using carbon dioxide and save the planet!!!
AlGore is right!
The models are right!
The models are right because they listened to AlGore and predict the mega drought and then a mega mega drought!!
Models will not vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to kill the planet because they are too smart for that!!!

James Rowen said...

A commenter wanted a You Tube video link posted, but didn't highlight it.

This is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKEZoY-TMG4

R said...

Funny stuff...

Droughts will be common through the end of the century?

Yet they can't tell me with a 50% certainty if it will rain this coming Tuesday or not. Hmmm...

Folks, I can't make this stuff up!

Anonymous said...

R, don't you feel the slightest bit ashamed when every time you post you feign stupidity to make an argument?

Reagan's Disciple said...

@ anon,

Just trying to come down to a level where you may understand it.