[A, sort of]California is desiccating![A, sort of]

S

Sac Arrow

New member
'Cause I took this pic while making a run to Columbia (O22) yesterday. Anyway, that is Camanche reservoir. You can kind of tell from the picture where the normal high water line is. Most of the shoreline you see and the islands are normally under water.

Oh by the way my lawn is completely dead. Common sight here lately.
 
azure said:
Civilization is fragile. Climate change has negatively impacted and probably brought down thriving civilizations before. It is the ultimate hubris to think that ours is immune.
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Climate change is not the cause of the California drought; in fact models indicate that they should be getting more rain during the winter. The mountains may get more rain than snow, causing earlier depletion of the snow pack during summer, but that is a again not what has been happening. Here's what NOAA says:

http://cpo.noaa.gov/ClimatePrograms...orces/DroughtTaskForce/CaliforniaDrought.aspx


Is the California Drought a symptom of long term climate change?

The current drought is not part of a long-term change in California precipitation, which exhibits no appreciable trend since 1895. Key oceanic features that caused precipitation inhibiting atmospheric ridging off the West Coast during 2011-14 were symptomatic of natural internal atmosphere-ocean variability.

Model simulations indicate that human-induced climate change increases California precipitation in mid-winter, with a low-pressure circulation anomaly over the North Pacific, opposite to conditions of the last 3 winters. The same model simulations indicate a decrease in spring precipitation over California. However, precipitation deficits observed during the past three years are an order of magnitude greater than the model simulated changes related to human-induced forcing. Nonetheless, record setting high temperature that accompanied this recent drought was likely made more extreme due to human-induced global warming.
 
1RTK1 said:
Dams don't make water, this is true, but if we had twice the water storeage from twice the dams we would be a lot less stressed than we are now.
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More water evaporates from reservoirs than is consumed by humans

So one could probably get almost twice as much utility out of existing reservoirs if the evaporation from them could be cut. Here is one recent (and tested) proposal to do just that by floating a thin film of an organic oil mix on the surface:

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/business/2012/09/cover-story.html#


The following graphic comes from the first linked article:

0212-compevapres-EN-b2e60.jpg
 
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