Hot times ahead for the Wild West—American west threatened by more heatwaves than past models have…

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090527/full/news.2009.518.html

Published online 27 May 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.518

News

Hot times ahead for the Wild West

American west threatened by more heatwaves than past models have predicted.

Hannah Hoag

Extreme temperatures are expected to become more common in the western United States by 2040 if greenhouse gases continue to rise, researchers say.

Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and his colleagues simulated climate change for the United States in decade-long periods from 2000 to 2039 using a climate model that divided the land into areas just 25 kilometres square. It is the first time that the region's temperature extremes have been modelled at such high resolution. The new projections were reported on 26 May at the joint assembly of the American Geophysical Union in Toronto, Canada.

Some regions where high seasonal temperatures had occurred just once during the second half of the twentieth century are projected to experience extreme temperatures many times in a single decade, according to the model. "The once-in-50-years event becomes the five-times-in-ten-year event, and in the western United States it is much higher than that — up to eight times per decade," says Diffenbaugh. Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah stand to be the most affected.

The new simulation indicates that the western United States will experience more temperature extremes than projected by the global climate models used in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Many of those models do not account for the topography of the region — which includes the Sierra Nevada Mountains, for example — in a realistic way, says Diffenbaugh.

…

Editorial Comment: Why do people insist on using clever headlines for really bad news!? :eyes:

[imdjh]

1. if schmiff nt

[villager]

2. well, since we have no money or water out here either, can we announce the "West is closed" now?

Freeze all developments on the boards, work on decommissioning roads, etc... ?

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. OK, but on your way out

Could you erect some solar farms…? You know…if you get a chance…

[villager]

6. that's not a bad idea...

though it would it be yet another thing we use the land for, only to export it east?

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. Re: … only to export it east?

Well… I mean… if you're not going to be using it to live in… that's some prime solar territory you've got there…

[villager]

9. Well, it's just the whole tapping-out-the-land thing....

clearly, the land out here can't take much more (how long will America's "salad bowl" hold out, for instance?)

On the other hand, if you intend to build these solar farms on the site of former ex-urbs in Arizona, Southern California, etc., then it will be a step up in land use planning!

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. Nah, I'm not interested in the "salad bowl."

[villager]

11. well, that's good -- I hope you're not buying produce from California now

'cause that spigot ain't gonna last forever...

And neither will the water to keep irrigating increasingly salted "farm land!"

[OKIsItJustMe]

12. OK … Seriously …

Large parts of the SW look to be fundamentally uninhabitable. If these predictions are right, it looks like a real hard time even for desert species.

The "Desert South West" is just about the best (terrestrial) site for building large-scale solar projects. I think we need to start ramping up production, and soon!

[villager]

13. Well, we both seem to agree that the SW's future in hosting "teeming metropolises"

is kaput -- bye Vegas, Phoenix, and right here in El Lay!

You might be right about the solar farms as a next step, as humans start to wind down, of necessity, their brief, frenetic, overdeveloped, pillaging time here (at least, in terms of the West's "American era...")

[phantom power]

4. Somewhere, you just made a club-for-growth kitten cry.

[imdjh]

5. That's pretty much what "respected scientists" said during the big drought

I can't remember when exactly that was, because it was pre-internet. But it wasn't pre-getmyselfinthenews.

The drought was truly bad. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that you could credit it with if not the birth of then the maturation of the everybody-onboard environmental movement. It's when "If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown then flush it down" was carved into the national toilet seat.

And they hauled out experts. Guys with Phd's in previous unglorious disciplines. Guys who knew about weather and archaeology. They announced that nothing that was being done was sufficient. They announced that this drought "might be" one that lasts 400 years, because archaeological evidence showed that there had been a 400 year drought somewhere around the year 1100 AD.

[closeupready]

8. I like 'if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise', lol

Like, why wouldn't they?