"\frac{1}{R}\sqrt{\frac{L}{C}}" wrote in message
...
Enough Already wrote:
California (pronounced "Cahleefohniah" by the governor) is in a
worsening 3-year drought and water rationing is possible this spring
or summer. BUT, the State has seen heavy rains in recent weeks.
Scientists say this doesn't matter because the water deficit is just
too large. A look at most reservoirs tells the story.

However, AGW deniers, if true to form, would claim that there "can be
no drought!" because it's raining on a given day; just as they claim
record cold spells in random locations mean polar & glacial ice "can't
be melting." That is, if people are being blamed for it. But if the
Sun is blamed, it's a whole 'nother ballgame!

Did y'all know that the global economic crisis is NOT the result of
greedy, shortsighted people, rather a certain star we orbit around?
Yes, the Sun is the bane of our existence in all realms! People can do
no harm, especially if they go to church and vote for whoever Rush
recommends.

Enough written. Those with adequate brainpower will understand the
analogy in the second paragraph. Those with low I.Q.s and short
attention spans won't; like the Creatard Right.

E.A.

http://enough_already.tripod.com/

Believing whatever makes you feel good is more like alcoholism than
optimism.

It is not only the drought in California, it is also the drought in the
Colorado River system, The Mississippi, and Central Africa. It is going
to be interesting how this develops.

Just as it has many, many times in the past.
Don't you look at history???


Long-Term Perspective on Drought Duration in the Colorado River Basin

August 2004



The length of observational records of climate and hydro-logic conditions in
the Colorado River basin is generally less than 100 years. Researchers,
however, generally prefer to assess episodes like drought, which have a
multiyear character, using time frames of centuries rather than decades. One
way to do so is to extend the observational records of climate using proxy
records; that is, to use variables that are indicative of climate, such as
annual bands in coral, lake sediment deposits, and tree-ring widths, for
which much longer records exist.



Analyses of tree rings have been used extensively to reconstruct the history
of drought in the United States for the past 800 years.



Tree-ring reconstructions of precipitation in northern Utah (Gray and
others, in press) indicate that, since 1226 A.D., nine droughts have
occurred lasting 15-20 years and four droughts have occurred lasting more
than 20 years.



Moreover, tree-ring records indicate that some past droughts in the Colorado
River basin persisted for several decades (Meko and others, 1995). Such
findings from the tree-ring record, coupled with new findings about the
connection between the AMO and drought frequency (McCabe and others, 2004),
suggest that the current drought could continue for several more years.
Alternatively, the three droughts that affected the basin during the 20th
century (Fig. 3) each lasted from 4 to 11 years, indicating that the current
dry conditions could shift to wetter conditions at any time.



http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2004/3062/



************************************************** ********



Colorado River Streamflow History Reveals Megadrought Before 1490

17 May 2007



An epic drought during the mid-1100s dwarfs any drought previously
documented for a region that includes areas of Arizona, Colorado, New
Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The six-decade-long drought was remarkable for the
absence of very wet years. At the core of the drought was a period of 25
years in which Colorado River flow averaged 15 percent below normal.



The new tree-ring-based reconstruction documents the year-by-year natural
variability of streamflows in the upper Colorado River basin back to A. D.
762, said the tree-ring scientists from The University of Arizona in Tucson
who led the research team.



The work extends the continuous tree-ring record of upper Colorado
streamflows back seven centuries earlier than previous reconstructions.



"The biggest drought we find in the entire record was in the mid-1100s,"
said team leader David M. Meko, an associate research professor at UA's
Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. "I was surprised that the drought was as
deep and as long as it was.



Colorado River flow was below normal for 13 consecutive years in one
interval of the megadrought, which spanned 1118 to 1179.



Meko contrasted that with the last 100 years, during which tree-ring
reconstructed flows for the upper basin show a maximum of five consecutive
years of below-normal flows.



The Colorado supplies water for cities and agriculture in seven western
states in the U.S. and two states in northwestern Mexico. Los Angeles, Las
Vegas, Denver, Phoenix, Tucson and Albuquerque are among the many cities
dependent on Colorado River water.


The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted in a recent report
that the southwestern U.S. will become hotter and drier as the climate
warms.



Co-author Connie A. Woodhouse said, "We have natural variability that
includes this time in the 1100s. If we have warming it will exacerbate these
kinds of droughts."



The newly documented droughts "could be an analogue for what we could expect
in a warmer world," said Woodhouse, a UA associate professor of geography
and regional development and dendrochronology.



Meko, who was asked by the California Department of Water Resources to
pursue the research, said understanding more about natural variability in
the Colorado is important to the region's water managers.



"Water managers rely on wet years to refill reservoirs," he said.



The team's research article, "Medieval drought in the upper Colorado River
Basin," is scheduled to be published online in the American Geophysical
Union's journal Geophysical Research Letters on May 24.



Meko and Woodhouse's co-authors are Christopher A. Baisan, a UA senior
research specialist; Troy Knight, a UA graduate student; Jeffrey J. Lukas,
of the University of Colorado at Boulder; Malcolm K. Hughes, a UA Regents'
Professor of dendrochronology; and Matthew W. Salzer, a UA research
associate. The California Department of Water Resources, the U.S. Geological
Survey and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation funded the work.



Just about a year ago, Woodhouse and Meko and colleagues published a
continuous tree-ring record for the upper Colorado River Basin that went
back to 1490, the longest record for the area until now.



Other paleoclimatic research had suggested that epic droughts occurred in
much of the western U.S. during the Medieval Climate Anomaly of about 900 to
1300, a time when some parts of the world were warmer than now. In addition,
tree-ring data from a large network of sites showed that the areal extent of
drought in western North America peaked prior to 1400.



Meko, Woodhouse and their colleagues wanted to take a closer look at what
happened in the upper Colorado River basin during that time.



For the record back to 1490, the scientists took cores from old, living
trees and looked at the rings' tell-tale pattern of thick and thin that
indicates wet years and dry years.



Extending the record further required an underutilized technique, the
analysis of logs, stumps and standing dead trees, known as remnant wood.



Baisan said, "Everyone was surprised that we could do this."



Woodhouse said, "It's so arid that wood can remain on the landscape for
hundreds of years. The outside of some of our remnants date to 1200, meaning
the tree died 800 years ago."



The scientists took pencil-thin cores from the living trees and
cross-sections of the remnant wood from 11 different sites. The researchers
then pieced together the long-term record by matching up the patterns from
the cores to those from the cross-sections.



Baisan said, "This is part of ongoing work to try to understand the climate
system that creates these patterns. You need the basic data about what
happened before you can ask questions such as 'Why were there 60 years of
low-flow on the Colorado?"



The team's next step is collecting additional samples from the study sites
and adding additional study sites in the upper Colorado River basin.



Christopher Baisan of The University of Arizona's Laboratory of Tree-Ring
Research examines a cross-section of wood he's just removed from a dead
Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) in a canyon near Price, Utah. Analysis
later showed that the tree had started life around A.D. 960, lived through
the epic drought of the 1100s and died in about 1421. Credit: David M. Meko,
The University of Arizona



Source: University of Arizona



http://www.physorg.com/news98643412.html







Warmest Regards



Bonzo