Weather Banter - View Single Post - Climate models [Was: Real beef! [Was: Agriculture's Bullied Market]]

Gordon Couger · May 21st 04, 10:11 PM posted to sci.agriculture,sci.geo.meteorology

From: "Torsten Brinch"
: On Fri, 21 May 2004 13:31:55 GMT, (Phred)
: wrote:
: In article H69rc.35326$bS1.7614@okepread02,
: "Gordon Couger" wrote:
:
: "Phred" wrote in message
: ...
: ..
: A fairly serious problem with a model based on past weather is that,
: if we assume climate is changing, then the basis of the model is
: largely irrelevant. Mind you, that mightn't matter so much in terms
: of "averages" in the short term future, but when it comes to
: predicting extremes (e.g. "100-year events" etc.) all bets are off.
:
: Having been involved in 4 100 year events in my 60 years of life I
question
: the system of clasifiction.
:
: Thank you for that observation, Gordon. Proves my point nicely.
:
: I think 'prove' is a tad strong, Phred, but assuming Gordon's
: observation is correct, it would seem to indicate some climate
: change. A back of the envelope calculation gives me that the
: probability of four or more 100 year events within 60 years is only
: about 1 %. However, before jumping to conclusion we'd better ask:
: what is Gordon's event-type and can he show us the data?
:
They were all 8 inches of rain fall in 24 hours on the same watershed. One
was 7 inches in an hour and 12 inch in 12 hours that I got caught out in
driving for the one hour it rained 7 inches. I forgot to include the 500
year flood that two of the rains 10 day apart caused.

I don't think it is climate change. I think that there are not enough
scientist in the areas that these kinds of rain fall events happen. I can
see old trash lines from long ago flood that are higher then anything recent
that show these are not new just not noticed or reported. They happen when
the jet stream is bringing water from the south west causing a rare monsoon
condition and a stalled cold front sets up slow moving thunder storms. The
thunder storms are no larger then they were 50 years ago when we had one
blow out in the stratosphere and cause it to be cloudy for over a week. We
have not hat that happen since.

Predicting thunder storms is not a very exact science. I act as one of the
net controls for tornado watches and take the late night shift and in the
very short term T storms are fairly predictable but on a year in advance
basis they are not predicable at all. The last year was the longest Oklahoma
has ever gone without a tornado and it had been forecast to be an active
year.

In the flood cropping practices have a large effect on the floods. We have
no urbanization problems. If a large percentage of the land in the water
shed is in cotton the flooding is substantially worse. With the change to no
till that will be reduced a good deal but cotton will still be worse than
wheat, corn, alfalfa or grass. But no till cotton will be better than
conventionally tilled corn or wheat after harvest and tillage.