Recent stories highlighting the potential length of the ongoing crippling Texas drought had the ring of an auction.
First bid is for a five-year Texas drought. Five years. Going once. Do I hear 10? Yes, 10 years to the climatologist in the corner. Ten-year Texas drought. Going once. Do I hear a 15-year drought? Yes, 15 years to the forecaster in the back. Fifteen years. Do I hear 20? Going once. Going twice. Sold. The drought will last 15 years.
It wasn't that different forecasters were competing to top each other in the drought-prediction game; most of the stories were based on statements made by Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon. Gammon says that the current long-term weather patterns might result in a multi-year drought similar to what Texas experienced in the 1950s.
The 1950s drought lasted seven years.
The current weather pattern includes the ongoing La Nina, which is a cooling of sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, which usually results in less precipitation than normal across Texas. The current La Nina is following quickly on the heels of an even stronger La Nina that influenced the weather pattern last winter and spring and is largely being blamed for the driest 12-month period on record across parts of the state.
Even though a La Nina will influence the weather for months at a time, it's still a short-term climatological factor compared to something that climatologists call the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which is a long-term warming or cooling of the overall sea-surface temperature of the Pacific.
A cool Pacific period, which is the current phase, tends to contribute to more frequent La Nina events than the warm phase, and in general, the cool phase of the Pacific is often attributed to less rain across Texas.
As you can see from the above chart, the Pacific generally remains in the cool or warm phase for many years at a time, and the 1950s -- the time of the worst drought in Texas history -- was a cold phase.
This is why the concern about a potential multi-year drought in Texas is valid; an important piece of the climatological puzzle points in that direction. However, it's important to note that other factors influence the climate on a yearly or seasonal basis as well. For instance, a year with a La Nina, which can occur even during a year when the Pacific is in its overall cold phase, could lead to a year with abundant winter rain. In addition, an abundance of tropical moisture associated with an active Atlantic basin hurricane season could provide short-term drought relief.
In other words, even a multi-year drought were to occur, it would most likely be intermixed with short intervals with normal rainfall.
Currently, nearly 97% of the state is in an extreme or exceptional drought, the two worst drought categories.
It's interesting to compare that to the PDO. Another worth looking at is the US wet/dry index - http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/drought/wetdry/bar-mod-110-00/190001-201012.gif
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/files/2011/08/txsum11.gif
You do have a way with propaganda. But the conditions on the ground
http://tinyurl.com/n22o9p
seem to rfeute your assertions. Care to explain? I didn't think so.
"Analysis of the sun's varying activity in the last two millennia indicates that contrary to the IPCC's speculation about man-made global warming as high as 5.8° C within the next hundred years, a long period of cool climate with its coldest phase around 2030 is to be expected. It is shown that minima in the 80 to 90-year Gleissberg cycle of solar activity, coinciding with periods of cool climate on Earth, are consistently linked to an 83-year cycle in the change of the rotary force driving the sun's oscillatory motion about the centre of mass of the solar system. As the future course of this cycle and its amplitudes can be computed, it can be seen that the Gleissberg minimum around 2030 and another one around 2200 will be of the Maunder minimum type accompanied by severe cooling on Earth. This forecast should prove skillful as other long-range forecasts of climate phenomena, based on cycles in the sun's orbital motion, have turned out correct as for instance the prediction of the last three El Niños years before the respective event."
http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/new-e.htm
Here in TX, some believe that mere praying will magically end the drought. Reporting predictions such as this in near heresy.
Sadly, in TX, it will be a few more years of drought, when some can no longer spend their week-ends at the lake, because the lake is gone or so low that their motorized equipment can't be used for them to actually get their attention.
Global temps are up a whole degree Centigrade globally, and the atmosphere is holding 4% more moisture because it is "stealing it" from certain locations and dumping on others. That activity exchange is up -- all over the world. Fact. That background effect means it is ripe to exaggerate either the length or intensity of a drought started by other factors. This article is about the possibility of a long term drought. And those odds are increased when temps are up globally.
Reduce flooding and help in areas of drought?=Communism!!
BUSINESS won't do it because it is not as proffitable as oil.
texas has 171,904,640 total acres, of which 142,000,000 are farm and ranchlands.
most places in texas are more than 12" behind in rainfall (actually, up to 20" behind), but for the sake of calculations, let's just say 1 foot.
an acre foot is 12" of water over the area of an acre. an acre foot is 325,851 gallons.
142,000,00Â0 * 325,851 = 4.6270842 x 10 to the 13th power.
divide that by 42 (42 gallons per barrell), and you have 42 trillion BARRELS of water to irrigate texas farmland over the course of a year.
just to give you an example, the Alyeska pipeline has pumped just over 15 billion barrels of oil since 1977 (the U.S. uses 19 billion barrels a day).
so, to irrigate all of texas, assuming you could even get that amount of water from the Missouri River floods, we'd have to pump 2,800 times the amount of water that alyeska has pumped of oil since 1977.
how are you going to distribute that amount of water evenly throughout 142,000,000 acres? and where are you going to store all that water? it's not like you can just turn it off and on. and if it all came at once, it would just run off, which would do nothing but erode the soil and wouldn't help the drought at all or replenish groundwater.
if you think the $5 billion in losses is expensive, try building that irrigation system. it won't fly.