Tag: drought

The Western Drought Is Bad. Here’s What You Should Know About It.

New York Times: The Western Drought Is Bad. Here’s What You Should Know About It. Answers to questions about the current situation in California and the Western half of the United States.

Much of the Western half of the United States is in the grip of a severe drought of historic proportions. Conditions are especially bad in California and the Southwest, but the drought extends into the Pacific Northwest, much of the Intermountain West, and even the Northern Plains.

Drought emergencies have been declared. Farmers and ranchers are suffering. States are facing water cutbacks. Large wildfires are burning earlier than usual. And there appears to be little relief in sight.

Experts with the United States Drought Monitor, a collaboration of several federal agencies and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, assess the severity of drought in a given area, ranking it from moderate to exceptional. They take many factors into account, including precipitation totals, snowpack, stream flows and soil moisture measurements, and use images from remote-sensing satellites to assess the health of vegetation.

The Daily Climate, April 27, 2021

Articles include: California drought; underreporting GHGs; weather station in the Andes; 26,000 snakes; tools: graphics and climate change; deforesting Brazil; EPA and California air standards; pandemic and snow melt in SE Asia.

Report: As a hotter, drier climate grips the Colorado River, water risks grow across the Southwest

Arizona Central: As a hotter, drier climate grips the Colorado River, water risks grow across the Southwest. The water level of Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir, has dropped more than 130 feet since the beginning of 2000, when the lake’s surface lapped at the spillway gates on Hoover Dam.

Twenty-one years later, with the Colorado River consistently yielding less water as the climate has grown warmer and drier, the reservoir near Las Vegas sits at just 39% of capacity. And it’s approaching the threshold of a shortage for the first time since it was filled in the 1930s.

The latest projections from the federal government show the reservoir will soon fall 7 more feet to cross the trigger point for a shortage in 2022, forcing the largest mandatory water cutbacks yet in Arizona, Nevada and Mexico.

 

Why the intense U.S. drought is now a megadrought

Mashable: Why the intense U.S. drought is now a megadrought.

Climate 101 is a Mashable series that answers provoking and salient questions about Earth’s warming climate.

The water keeps going down.

Almost the entire Southwest is mired in various stages of drought as of April 21, 2021, resulting in falling water levels at the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. The consequences could be unprecedented. For the first time in Lake Mead’s 85-year existence, water levels may drop below a point this summer that triggers water cuts in Arizona and Nevada. (This would largely mean cuts to farmers and agriculture.)

Geological and climate records show that sustained droughts, lasting decades, come and go in the Southwest. But the current prolonged drying trend, which started some 20 years ago, is exacerbated by a rapidly warming climate. This makes the current drought not just long, but especially intense.

The Daily Climate, April 19, 2021

Articles include: forests cut for fuel; immigration driven by climate change; infrastructure funding and orphan wells; Greta Thunberg and Congress; ALEC fighting climate change science; bottom trawling fishing; US and China; climate guide for kids; drought in the western US & Mexico; methane & old wells; Louisiana oil haven; allergies worsened by climate change.

State Water Control Board turns down ‘speculative’ water permit request

Virginia Mercury: State Water Control Board turns down ‘speculative’ water permit request.

The Virginia State Water Control Board last week denied a proposal by the owners of Cranston’s Mill Pond in James City County to withdraw millions of gallons of water per day to sell to potential buyers, drawing a hard line against what state officials have cast as speculative use of a public good.

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality “determined that issuing a permit this speculative would set an unwarranted precedent that would encourage the privatization of a public water resource,” Scott Kudlas, director of DEQ’s Office of Water Supply, told the board.

Pond owner Restoration Systems, however, has argued that although it has not secured an end user of the water, ongoing groundwater scarcity in the eastern portion of the state justifies the awarding of a water withdrawal permit.

The Daily Climate, April 15, 2021

Articles include: 2050 Goals are inadequate; champagne & climate change; 100% clean power; renewable energy powers decarbonization; electric vehicles by 2035; Interior Department and Manchin; Epic Drought; Indian monsoon season; ticks moving into the Arctic; East African oil pipeline; American research station abandoned; food web in the Great Lakes.

Western U.S. may be entering its most severe drought in modern history

CBS News: Western U.S. may be entering its most severe drought in modern history. Extreme drought across the Western U.S. has become as reliable as a summer afternoon thunderstorm in Florida. And news headlines about drought in the West can seem a bit like a broken record, with some scientists saying the region is on the precipice of permanent drought. That’s because in 2000, the Western U.S. entered the beginning of what scientists call a megadrought — the second worst in 1,200 years — triggered by a combination of a natural dry cycle and human-caused climate change.

 

California is on the brink of drought – again. Is it ready?

The Guardian: California is on the brink of drought – again. Is it ready? It’s been just four years since the state’s last drought emergency and battles are beginning over how scarce supplies are rationed.

California is at the edge of another protracted drought, just a few years after one of the worst dry spells in state history left poor and rural communities without well water, triggered major water restrictions in cities, forced farmers to idle their fields, killed millions of trees, and fueled devastating megafires.

On Thursday, the unofficial end of California’s wet season, officials announced that the accumulation of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains and the Cascades was about 40% below average levels. The state doesn’t have enough snow and rain banked to replenish its groundwater supplies, feed its rivers and streams or fill depleted reservoirs

The Daily Climate, April 6, 2021

Articles include: Orphan oil wells & climate change; lightning, wildfires, and the Arctic; farmland restoration; wage gap; alternatives for coal country; carbon flooding; O&G jobs disappearing; Texas winter energy disaster; diseases in Alaska; drought in Michigan and Arizona; fossil fuel subsidies.