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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."
When your data size is 1, drawing conclusions is problematic.
Also, the blob itself went away last fall. There is a significant amount of warmer than average water that has appeared along much of the West coast this winter, but it's not in the same location as the blob.
#DeleteChrome
Based on a mixed layer temperature budget, these anomalies were caused by lower than normal rates of the loss of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere, and of relatively weak cold advection in the upper ocean. Both of these mechanisms can be attributed to an unusually strong and persistent weather pattern featuring much higher than normal sea level pressure over the waters of interest. This anomaly was the greatest observed in this region since at least the 1980s.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
We prefer to called: "Coolness challenged entities"
You insensitive clod.
California lawmakers are currently writing up new legislation that bans warm blobs and requires warning labels on any existing warm blobs.
Problem solved!
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
http://thinkprogress.org/clima...
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
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.
We're all drinking 'toilet' water. The dinosaurs shit in it! Fear of recycled water was created by the bottling industry (which causes local 'mini-droughts' by buying up all rights to an aquifer and restricting water usage by the locals). I'm sure they are on the verge of telling us that drinkable tap water is unfair competition. Economics and politics are the direct causes of all shortages of all kinds.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
did you not read my entire comment? If the ocean is warm enough, the wet air can make it over the mountains...only then do we keep the water. The Chihuahuan desert is hundreds of miles from the ocean, and guess what - it probably /does/ still manage to help pull wet air to it at night, if you consider the land between it and the ocean is relatively green. Do you not imagine geography to play a part? Do you really think that if one particular area is a particular way, every other place on the planet should be the same way? California, in particular, gets more wet when the ocean is warmer. If you don't believe me, google an obscure (snark) climate pattern known as "El Nino" - which for California brings heavy rains, but for other places can cause droughts. Or...and I guess you're choosing the or...pretend everyplace on the planet has the same climate.
Also, the lack of reprocessing and reusing of waste water. We could achieve a lot by filtering and reusing the waste water aka "toilet to tap."
This is exactly the wrong approach. The last thing California needs is more top-down "solutions". Just price the water properly, and if recycling makes economic sense, it will happen. Most likely it will NOT happen, because it is a dumb idea. You have to deal, not only with the cost of cleaning the sewage, but also the energy cost of pumping it back uphill to where it can be reused. A far simpler solution is to end the subsidies for growing rice in the desert.
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 Kim Dotcom.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Sure. And then say goodbye to the agricultural industry in California as they try to compete with everywhere else on the planet that doesn't "price water properly". Seriously, you can't see that?
Say 'goodbye' to 2% of the state's economy that is causing serious hardship to the other 98% and which is the largest draw to increasing illegal immigration?
To the CA ag industry I say "don't let the door hit you in the ass!"
Well being that it shouldn't have happened in the first place, coming back down to reality from a life of a 'high' is a real bitch, ant it?
Life is not for the lazy.
You seem to think that businesses have a right to subsidies, even if they harm society. Let's give patent trolls some subsidies. Sure, they're damaging our society, but think of all the jobs we're lose!
Your assessment is flawed. Warmer temperatures do mean more water can evaporate, but that does not mean it will precipitate in nearby regions. There are many regions around the world that are hot, humid, and still dry as a bone (Somalia, Northwestern Peru, most Middle Eastern countries that border the ocean, etc.).This is like the other bad science assumption often tossed around by deniers: " Well if there is more water vapor then there will be more clouds and so the world will cool down!". No, it doesn't work like that.
There are conditions that need to be met for cloud formation and precipitation. If the atmosphere is stable, then it really doesn't matter how much moisture is present. If a blocking ridge forms over the region, then those warm moist air masses are going to move somewhere else. If there is a thick enough layer of dry air beneath the moist air, then it'll just be virga. If the air masses destabilize before coming ashore, then it'll just dump rain back into the ocean.
But I'm sure you know all this.
~X~
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
And before that, the meteorologists refered to "the southern oscillation"
It's still called that.
there was El Nino and La Nina - depending on whereabouts in the Pacific the warm surface water was located.
Those are names for the warm and cold phases of that oscillation. The only thing that might have changed is that people are more willing to use the Spanish words to describe the phenomenon.
A few decades ago, before global warming became popular
The Southern Oscillation and Anthropogenic Climate Change refer to different phenomena that are explained by different processes. The only thing they have in common is that they both have something to do with the weather.
The _really_ hot stuff has already decayed. High output = short half-life. The most dangerous stuff is not dangerous because it's especially hot, but because the human body likes to retain and concentrate it (cesium-137, for example).
Drop a pipe in the Pacific, run it over the mountains, maybe parallel to the road that descends into Palm Springs and refill that nasty smelling swamp. On the way down the hill you can generate electricity, desalinate, extract minerals and make sushi. Win, win, win and wasabi.
Death Valley is next. I'm pretty sure turtles float.
I don't think you understand the limits of a siphon -- the maximum rise along a siphon for water is 32 feet (the same limit as the limit for a suction pump, which is why well pumps are at the bottom of the well) -- any higher and the pressure within the liquid drops below its vapor pressure and bubbles form, breaking the siphon. It'd take large pumps and a lot of energy to pump the water over any significant rise - even if you extract some of the energy on the way down, you don't get nearly as much back as you put in.
Since the Salton sea is below sea level, you could tunnel the water in -- though it would take massive pipes/aqueducts for enough water to flow for significant energy generation.
Perhaps the water is being insulated by the eddy of plastic trash in the central Pacific?
The warm blog has been a topic on Cliff Mass's blog several times. He does a good job of explaining it and its effects.
Just looks like the PDO's flipped back to positive to me - not exactly a mystery!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
The Atacama Desert is definitely at least partly tropical, starting at 18 degrees south. So is the Sahara, whose southern boundary is around 15 degrees north. The Namib extends to the 18 th degree south, it is also at least partly tropical. The only desert that is not in the Tropcis is the Chihuahua desert, but it is at least close to a tropical sea, the Gulf of Mexico.
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.
"price water properly" is probably a good, and simple solution.
But there are many practical barriers that make this nearly impossible.
For one, there are treaties and water-rights already assigned. These involve multi-state government agreements, and there really is not an authority mechanism in existence that can address these in a unified way.
For two, there are political entanglements (regulatory capture, and officials who are basically corporate AG lapdogs).
This is one of those Utopian Ideals issues, where you think that if some magical authority came in, and put a gun to everyone's head and said: you will give up your advantageous, privileged bargaining position, and now you will pay what everyone else pays for water (and be willing to pull the trigger when they refuse or fight back) - it would solve the problem.
Basically, we need a Stalin. Or a Pol Pot.
Or we need to magically convert into a race of altruists.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.