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Mystery "Warm Blob" In the Pacific Ocean Could Be Causing California's Drought
Mr D from 63 writes A mysterious "warm blob" in the Pacific Ocean could be the reason why US West coast states like California are experiencing their worst ever drought, a new study says. From the article: "Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean at the University of Washington, began watching the blob a year and a half ago. 'In the fall of 2013 and early 2014, we started to notice a big, almost circular mass of water that just didn't cool off as much as it usually did, so by spring of 2014 it was warmer than we had ever seen it for that time of year,' Bond said in a news release about the studies appearing in Geophysical Research Letters."
This probably explains, why some driest places on Earth are close to tropical oceans, right? The Atacama Desert, the Chihuahua Desert, the Namib Desert or the Sahara.
Those are not tropical deserts, but on the 30-35-degree latitude lines, the hottest and driest places in the world. Between these lines is cooler, but a lot wetter.
"worst ever drought"
It might be the worst drought since the area became a state (though there were others that were close if not worse) but it is far from the worst drought ever in the region. On at least 5 occasions over the past 1000 years there have been droughts that make this one seem mild in comparison.
Actually that an extremely viable solution. The only problem is the public's reaction. However, LA currently has a system the alleviates public "concerns" by recharging the groundwater aquifer with treated effluent and the pumping the water back up nearby as drinking water. The aquifer provides an additional level of treatment comparable to tertiary treatment that would be required if it was directly from toilet to tap. This actually solves a number of problems: it treats the water further, it reuses water, it's a good water storage solution in a densely populated area, and the ground water isn't adversely affected by over withdrawals which can cause subsidence.
It's amazing how much more water there was in parts of California in the relatively recent past, much lost outside of any extreme drought events.
Owens lake was used to fuel development in the Los Angeles area, especially the San Fernando Valley about 100 years ago.
Tulare lake is now gone, yet during the wetter years in the 1800's was as large as 900 square miles.
There's actually a tale of sunken treasure from a gold shipment lost in a storm.
http://www.tularecountylibrary...
http://www.workmansbooks.com/c...
I found a late 1850's newspaper report originating from Fort Yuma of a cinnabar (mercury ore) discovery near the junction of the Mojave and Colorado rivers. (Although dangerous, mercury was commonly used for extracting gold since that readily dissolves into it) The thing is, the mojave river isn't shown reaching the Colorado in later times. There were conflicting reports of the reach of the Mojave in the era, but whatever the recent water source had been, it certainly isn't there now. Here's a pdf of some of the study done of the mojave and ancient lakes. It looks like water at high levels about 7000 years ago went beyond a spillway causing erosion the led to water not being held. It seems that it isn't just climate shifts, but the keeping of water from the wetter periods that is behind some of the major changes seen in California.
The California land around Tulare lake was once treated as worthless because of it flooding, and was sold for a dollar an acre.
Well great job on getting rid of that troublesome water guys. The area was once so rich in animal and plant life that for a very long period it had one of the highest population densities of North American native (Indian) populations. Although about a third of the west coast natives had already been killed off by the combination of violence and exposure to European diseases, things got much worse after the mid 1850's. The gold rush drove much of the change, but climate played a role also. There was already a drought by the end of the 1850's. Santa Barbara saw a 133 degree heat burst of 133 degrees three solar rotations before the Carrington storm. Much of the Santa Barbara beef was culled to to limited grass in the drought. The southern part of the state saw some rain (and the death of Bernardo Yorba on his rancho by the Santa Ana river near what's now Yorba Linda near Anaheim) related to the San Diego Hurricane of 1958, the storm went back out to sea before getting to Santa Barbara. Even with the great California flood of early 1862, which silting in the lagoon at Santa Barbara, the drought was severe in 1863 and 1864. That caused the collapse of some of the rancho operation near Santa Barbara, leading to some land becoming available for sale to outsiders. The combination of drought, an extreme 1861-62 winter, and cattle eating what little the Indians grew led to problems when Indians working with ranches near the Owens Valley didn't get paid and stole cattle for food. That led to the Owens Valley Indian War of 1864. Fort Independence, seen as the town of Independence. The U.S. military found that going out and killing anything that the Indians might eat was the most effective way to drive them to submission. The population was largely killed off, less than 40 inhabit the current reservation in the area. In retrospect, as with the plight of some of the struggling farmers in Syria, climate variation had a major impact on what unfolded.
Here's a PDF of some ancient information on the Mojave river/lake and related areas.
http://quest.nasa.gov/projects...
The 1859 Santa Barbara heat burst event was not just a variation of the local "sundowner" winds causing compressive warming from sinking air in coastal canyons. The even peaked ju
Most of the water they are drinking already was toilet to tap. From the people upstream.
But the ocean-discharge water is fine for agricultural use, and some industrial use. A separate water system using non-potable water for some uses would make more sense than using potable water for all uses.
I'v even seen indications that you could use osmosis as a power source for reverse osmosis, so that you could desalinate seawater from the power of the salinization of the wastewater.
Learn to love Alaska
Calling the current period a "drought" is contingent upon assuming the rainfall pattern of the last 150 years or so is normal. Research seems to indicate that the last 150 years were abnormally wet and that Cali climate is usually much drier. Doesn't matter though, as the current drought plays into the AGW narrative, because "climate change".
"California's current drought is being billed as the driest period in the state's recorded rainfall history. But scientists who study the West's long-term climate patterns say the state has been parched for much longer stretches before that 163-year historical period began.
And they worry that the "megadroughts" typical of California's earlier history could come again.
Through studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence, researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years -- compared to the mere three-year duration of the current dry spell. The two most severe megadroughts make the Dust Bowl of the 1930s look tame: a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years.
"We continue to run California as if the longest drought we are ever going to encounter is about seven years," said Scott Stine, a professor of geography and environmental studies at Cal State East Bay. "We're living in a dream world."
Stine, who has spent decades studying tree stumps in Mono Lake, Tenaya Lake, the Walker River and other parts of the Sierra Nevada, said that the past century has been among the wettest of the last 7,000 years.
Looking back, the long-term record also shows some staggeringly wet periods. The decades between the two medieval megadroughts, for example, delivered years of above-normal rainfall -- the kind that would cause devastating floods today.
The longest droughts of the 20th century, what Californians think of as severe, occurred from 1987 to 1992 and from 1928 to 1934. Both, Stine said, are minor compared to the ancient droughts of 850 to 1090 and 1140 to 1320.