'Megadroughts’ predicted to ravage the Southwest

[Auggie]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

The Southwest, including California, along with the Great Plains states, will endure long-lasting “megadroughts” in the second half of this century, worse by far than anything seen in the past 1,000 years, a team of climate experts said Thursday.

The driving force behind the devastating droughts? Human-induced global warming, the team reported.

The new forecast is based on models of continued climate change that consider the slow pace of many nations to curb their output of greenhouse gases. The scientists contend there is at least a 20 percent chance that coming droughts will last 35 years or more, and a 50 percent chance that they will last 10 years or more.

“When you stack these model projections against the reconstruction of past climates, the results are so sobering that they have me ready to go out for a drink,” said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science and Stanford University, in an e-mail.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Megadroughts-predicted-to-ravage-the-Southwest-6078504.php

---

The link reports that scientists’ forecasts are based on “the most reliable model results available in the world today.”

[SpankMe]

1. Long term planning is needed, now.

Now would be the time for western/southwestern states - and maybe the federal government - to study, spec out and start squirreling away the billions that will be necessary to establish a whole network of desalination plants up and down the west coast. Start now and be done in 10-12 years. Then, when the drought goes high order, you have a water source ready and waiting.

[Trillo]

2. Desalination is not the only option, though it is one of them.

Desalination requires a lot of energy input (electricity to run high-pressure pumps).

We have a warming climate, this means there is more moisture in the air, and we are not harvesting this, unless the moisture condenses naturally as rain.

There are devices used in, I think Eithiopia, which without any energy inputs, make 25 gallons per day of water. They're called Warka water. I wonder if these can be scaled up in size and engineered to pull larger amounts of water from the air. They're made of simple materials, so lots of them could be built at relatively low cost.

I don't know if they can be scaled up to the sizes needed, but I do think it should be considered.

[Auggie]

3. We'll need a co-ordinated effort ...

of many devices and options ...

the Warka device you mention, desalination plants, more reservoirs, larger reservoirs, pipelines/canals, and new and continued conservation, including how we use and imagine things like landscaping, public parks, golf courses, swimming pools, industrial uses (NO MORE FRACKING), etc.

[Dustlawyer]

21. And placing solar panels over all canals, reservoirs etc.

[passiveporcupine]

23. Here in Oregon the goal is to switch from open irrigation canals to underground pipes

A lot of water is lost to evaporation with open canals.

[CrispyQ]

5. The baskets are cool. Check out this billboard in Peru.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a8875/a-billboard-that-condenses-water-from-humidity-15393050/

Both represent ingenuity at it's finest!

[duhneece]

19. TWo possible soluitions we can put on the table

About the electricity needed for desal plant (I live in highly briny water table area), could we expand our R & D for solar to provide?
The WARKA Water sounds so interesting. They mention using bamboo or a local plant for part of it. Could we use hemp? NM looks poised to ok its production.

[CreekDog]

9. Do you want to pay for desalination plants to water almonds and alfalfa?

Do you have any idea how huge a subsidy to those products and to agriculture that would be?

Why would you do such a thing?

I'm not sure why you think there isn't enough water, even in drought situations for domestic uses. There is.

But most of the water collected in our reservoirs doesn't go to domestic uses.

[SunSeeker]

11. Exactly. We need to rethink what we grow in CA and how we grow it. nt

[jwirr]

13. And that needs to be done on a national level as some of this could be grown elsewhere. We are

back to the land use issue of the 60s. Finally.

[Auggie]

14. I was just reading a lot of farmers are ripping out grape vines and planting almonds orchards

in the Central Valley. Almonds command higher prices than grapes but require more water.

That'll bite them in the ass, of course, as water prices rise.

[OnlinePoker]

12. Here's an idea that won't get any action

Stop allowing people to move there. If you know the aquifers are already being severely depleted and the forecast for above ground is less rain, don't let another tract of land in the desert be developed.

[Exultant Democracy]

4. There is a lot of the Southwest we should have never started to farm.

Now we have those farmers to deal with which means that we will not be able to do anything effective to avert the easily foreseeable disaster. Even without a mega drought this was not going to work out long term.

[jwirr]

17. Yes, we have used very bad ecological methods to turn land that should not have been farmed into

farms. And the top issue in this is irrigation. Enough.

[Dont call me Shirley]

26. Planting lawns should be illegal in the southwest.

[CrispyQ]

6. I wish we would address the acres & acres of business park lawn & residential lawns, too.

I live in a cul-de-sac of six & only the little girl next door plays outside on the grass. The rest of us water & maintain lawns that we never set foot on unless we are maintaining them.

The business parks are notorious for watering during the heat of the day & often times you will see a stretch of yellowed grass because the sprinkler head is shooting the water out into the street.

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

8. I might pave my whole lawn green and make a full court basketball arena.

[Auggie]

10. Most business parks and condo associations are aware of this

The savings in water costs by switching to drought tolerant plants and hardscaping can be in the thousands of dollars annually.

I do consulting work for a large landscaping company in the S.F. Bay Area. This company promotes conservation heavily because there's a lot of money in it for them to do the work.

As water rates rise to homeowners I expect to see similar conversions in residential landscaping too.

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

7. Ken, let us know what bar you'll be at - I think we all need to cry in our ale.

[C Moon]

15. I live in Southern California near the beach...

today is February 13 and it's 11:45.
The temperature is 86 degrees.
:/

[PasadenaTrudy]

20. I'm in Pasadena

where it's hotter. Just tried sitting on my deck in the shade and it was too hot. My deck faces south so really hot!

[C Moon]

22. Used to live in Pas myself. I cherished the winters. Non-summer days like these frustrated me.

[GliderGuider]

16. In honor of Valentine's Day, here are the three sweetest words in the English language:

"Told you so!"

[Stonepounder]

18. But there is no climate change.

These so-called 'climatologists' are just shills for {insert dog-whistle here} to scare us into letting Obama clamp down with more Fascist, Nazi, Muslim, Dictatorship, anti-Christian, anti-business regulations and destroy more corporations and be mean to the Koch brothers so he can come and take away our guns and give the US over to the UN. (Or maybe it was the Muslim Brotherhood, or maybe it was ISIS...no wait it was to further the gay agenda!) Mankind can't possible change the climate, only God can. And if God chooses to, there is nothing we can do about it because it means the Rapture is coming because you know God hates Fags.

Anyway, doing anything about the Hoax of climate change would cost Exxon-Mobile and Standard Oil lots of money and they are the job creators and so fewer jobs would trickle down and my insurance rates would go way up because of that damn Obamacare that I refuse to buy!!

[Brother Buzz]

24. An underwater forest in the Sierra reveals the story of a historic megadrought lasting 200 years

This is a real interesting story, but one needs to understand the unique geological porosity of the lake that led to the discovery, and it DID rain during the 200 year drought, but only 60% of the modern average.

An underwater forest reveals the story of a historic megadrought

A curved tree saw in his gloved hand, a scuba tank on his back, Phil Caterino worked quickly to slice through a pine branch 100 feet below the surface of a small tarn south of Lake Tahoe. Bubbles streamed from the regulator in his mouth, rising through the blue alpine water and green flecks of algae in Fallen Leaf Lake. That autumn day in 1997, Caterino briefly considered what would happen if he accidentally nicked the air hose running to his mouthpiece, or cut his orange dry suit, letting the 39-degree water rush in. "I'd be at the bottom of the lake, dead in about five minutes," he mused.

Having dived some 400 high-altitude lakes over the course of 30 years -- often reciting a protective Washoe prayer beforehand -- Caterino, director of the Lake Tahoe-based environmental nonprofit Alpengroup, doesn't shy away from occupational hazards. He surfaced a few minutes later, branch in hand. Even though the tree it came from had been stewing underwater for 800 years, it still smelled pungently of sap.

This botanic relic is one of several medieval trees, ranging from 68 to 100 feet tall, standing upright at the bottom of the lake. They grew during a 200-year megadrought in the Sierra Nevada between the 9th and 12th centuries, when precipitation in the area fell to less than 60 percent of the average between 1969 and 1992. Fallen Leaf Lake dropped about 150 to 200 feet below its current level, allowing the trees to grow above the lower shoreline. In the wetter years that followed, the lake quickly refilled, drowning the trees and sealing them in a liquid catacomb, safe from insects and fungi in the deep, low-oxygen water. There are also three older trees, which drowned between 18 and 35 centuries ago, standing upright on the lake floor, which suggests that severe droughts struck even further back in time.

The medieval trees' existence adds to the body of research documenting the Sierra Nevada's past megadroughts. Researchers have found stumps of long-dead trees in rivers, lakes and marshes in the region, indicating not one, but two medieval megadroughts -- the other lasting about 140 years in the 13th and 14th centuries, dwarfing the 20th century's Dust Bowl. Such megadroughts are a frightening prospect, and it's possible they could strike again.

John Kleppe, a professor emeritus at the University of Nevada-Reno who owns a lakeside home on Fallen Leaf, accidentally discovered the mysterious climatic archive. For 15 years, his fishing lures bumped against an unknown something in the deeps. "It looked like a fish strike," says Kleppe. "The pole just bent down. I never snagged and never caught anything." Curious, he finally asked Caterino to investigate.

<more>

http://www.hcn.org/issues/44.22/underwater-forest-reveals-the-story-of-a-historic-megadrought

[Auggie]

25. Great find. Thanks for posting. We're so naive in our understanding of earth's history.