Climate Change Doubles Drought Stricken Area

Cally writes "The National Atmospheric Research Center has published research showing that the percentage of Earth's land area stricken by serious drought more than doubled from the 1970s to the early 2000s, and attributing this to global climate change. Interestingly, the lead author comments that 'droughts and floods are extreme climate events that are likely to change more rapidly than the average climate'."

Comments

Re:Global Warming?

[ikkibr]

it could be snowing in the middle of April in New Jersey, but it was damn hot in Brazil :/ Like 45C in my town

Can't Blame Global Warming?

[physicsphairy]

There are two ways that droughts are produced. 1. less precipitation 2. precipitation drops in the wrong places.

Global warming produces increased precipitation.

So what's changing the wind patterns?

Re:Can't Blame Global Warming?

[tuxter]

I think salinity has a huge deal to do with it. Salinity kills everything around, making dry, arid country, the heat from the sun during the day builds up in the ground, and gets released at night, obviously if there is a hot updraft, it prevents rain or clouds from forming. If it gets hot enough (As it does where I am) the updraft actually pushes the clouds aside, and the precipitation falls over places of less thermal value, i.e. the sea.

Maybe the Droughts are causing the climate change?

[slashkitty]

Or at least the development, farming, clear cutting in those areas has caused it. Places where they measure temperature and rainfall the most are areas that are developed the most. The real question here is are these really long term changes or just natural fluctuations. 5, 30, 100 years are not long term in the scheme of things here.

Al Gore's book title is correct

[Dancin_Santa]

"Earth in the Balance"

While he obviously meant it to mean that Earth is somehow delicately balanced and any movement in one direction or another will topple the climate for the worse, the fact of the matter is that the Earth has a natural environmental cycle that balances itself out over time.

So thousands of years ago there was an ice age followed by the long warm age we live in now. Before that there were other ice ages and warm ages. We put sulfur into the atmosphere, it comes down as acid rain, but somewhere else the sky is blue and the birds are singing. Just because we "damage" one area does not mean that we cannot improve another area.

Even in the case of climate warming, an increase in warmth leads to higher oceanic evaporation which leads to more cloud cover which counteracts the heating caused by the Sun (which is far greater a heat source than our piddly output) which then leads to global cooling again which leads to less oceanic evaporation which leads to less cloud cover which leads to ... and so on and so forth.

There is a problem with polluting because it makes our environment unlivable, much live a fish tank can't support aquatic life if there isn't a certain amount of care put towards keeping it clean. But on the large scale, global warming is one of those things that is coming, we can't do anything about it, and will go away whether we are here or not by that time.

Re:Al Gore's book title is correct

[demachina]

"Venus has an atmosphere of about 95% CO2. It is physically impossible for humans to create anywhere near that level of CO2 here on Earth."

You also don't need anything close to that to devestate life on earth. If we push up the Earth's average temperature 10-20 degrees Fahrenheit that will be enough to cause a massive disruption in our climate and lives. 10 degrees is within the range currently estimated by the National Science Foundation for the next 100 years especially if we make no attempt to check green house gas production.

"Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased nearly 30%, methane concentrations have more than doubled, and nitrous oxide concentrations have risen by about 15%."

"Since 1979, scientists have generally agreed that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide increases the earth?s average surface temperature by 1.5-4.5C (3-8F). More recent studies have suggested that the warming is likely to occur more rapidly over land than the open seas."

"Global mean surface temperatures have increased 0.5-1.0F since the late 19th century. The 20th century's 10 warmest years all occurred in the last 15 years of the century. Of these, 1998 was the warmest year on record. The snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere and floating ice in the Arctic Ocean have decreased. Globally, sea level has risen 4-8 inches over the past century. Worldwide precipitation over land has increased by about one percent. The frequency of extreme rainfall events has increased throughout much of the United States." **Reference California this week.

"At first, the cooler oceans will tend to absorb much of the additional heat and thereby decrease the warming of the atmosphere. Only when the ocean comes into equilibrium with the higher level of CO2 will the full warming occur."

"The conservationist looks for the best way to solve an environmental issue taking into account as much science as is possible. The environmentalist already knows what the right way to solve an issue is and finds the science to back him up. I think this is why you got upset that I mocked your assertion that cow farts are causing global warming."

I'm sorry but your rhetoric throughout this thread shows you are anything but a conservationist and you don't give a rats ass about any of the science involved. Your approach to the science is the ostrich approach, stick your head in the sand and hope for the best. I'm giving you reference after reference, and you give me denial, tangents and empty rhetoric. A conservationist isn't going to pick fossil fuels and nukes as the only two viable energy sources for the planet.

Nuclear is an option but it comes laced with problems in particular safety, especially in an age where they are inviting terrorism targets, waste disposal and the obvious fact the U.S. wont stand for most places around the world having it due to the weapons proliferation problems. One little accident with a big nuclear plant and you poison a vast area and they simply aren't fool proof no matter how good the design.

The climate went apeshit

[KiloByte]

It looks like the world's climate has changed a lot. When I was a kid, the winter started around Dec 20th and lasted until late March where I live. Nowadays, in the last few years, if we had any snow it was in November, with nothing during the time when the winter was supposed to be, with perhaps another strike of snow around April. Such "two springs" years became nearly a rule lately -- with a screwed up effect on the vegetation.

Ah, I'm just 26, so that "when I was a kid" is not that far ago. Such a rapid, severe change of climate is something not to be trifled with.

But hey... we have several processes that cause rapid global warming running simultaneously with processes that cause global cooling. Things just have to act weird :p

This seems very wrong = central U.S. wetter

[puzzled]

It says the central U.S. is wetter but the man made lakes in western Nebraska are toast - McConaughy is at something like 32% of full and they're going to dry up three smaller downstream lakes to keep it at least partially full next summer.

Maybe its a fifty year average and the last five have been bad ...

Re:Drought and land use??

[Anonymous Coward]

Cattle didn't create the dust bowl. Anyone who told you that is simply wrong. Clouds of dust were the result of farming in areas that shouldn't have been plowed. Lots and lots of cows might produce a cloud of dust, but nothing like a couple of dozen sections of plowed land mixed with high wind and no rain.

Re:drought?

[Orp]

By the way - if somebody knows what I'm talking about and has a good link to the material, I'd love to see it. Telling people about the TV show I saw that one time gets old.

Google the following:
Thermohaline Circulation
Younger Dryas
Lake Agassiz

If deep convection in the Labrador/Greenland sea ceases, the Gulf Stream will cease and England will get mighty chilly. Roughly speaking, if you don't have cold, salty water sinking downward in this region, no surface currents will move to fill the void (kind of like plugging the drain in the bathtub).

As the northern hemisphere began coming out of the last glacial maximum about 13,000 years ago, it abruptly became colder again - slammed back into the cold regime. A leading hypothesis as to why this occurred is that a lot of ice was melting in modern-day Canada the northern US and forming a large lake (Lake Agassiz). Suddenly, the dam broke (probalby down the St. Lawrence) and a gazillion gallons of fresh water was spilled into the North Atlantic, creating a freshwater "lid" which kept the surface waters from getting dense enough to convect downward like they do sporadically today.

I did some post-doc modeling research on deep convection in the Greenland Sea. Neat stuff. There are only a very few places where this sinking occurs in the ocean, and without it the climate of the world would be much different.

Re:Nuclear Power Now!

[The Master Control P]

"Nuclear power has a series of terrible consequences that have been shown to occur."

Care to name some? France generates 3/4 of it's power with nuclear reactors and they don't seem to have any problems. Hell, in any power plant in the western world, you could have a Chernobyl-type meltdown and so what - it's called a containment dome.

"safety in the running of a plant"

You're exposed to more intense radiation in a fossil fuel plant or an airliner flight or during a sunbath than in a nuclear power plant. Fossil fuel plants spew tons of Uranium and Thorium into the atmosphere every year. If anything, a nuclear power plant is safer than a fossil fuel power plant.

As for the waste, about 95 to 98 percent of it is still good nuclear fuel that's been poisoned by fission byproducts. If greens would stop howling about "mobile Chernobyls" (How are we going to stuff a hundred million curies of radioactivity into a 100 gallon drum anyway?) and let the government reprocess the 'spent' fuel, 95 percent of the problem would disappear! Then the few cubic meters of radioactive sludge remaining could be locked into ceramics and buried forever.

"30% efficient solar cells."

Not going to bite... Go read the actual article and the comments. Hint: the device could theoretically be 30% efficient.