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COP27

Wilmarie: A Current Perspective of Droughts.

11/11/2015

4 Comments

 
Picture
Front Cover of the Report. [http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/explaining-extreme-events-2014]
     Just a month before start the COP21, Bulletin of American Meteorological Society (BAMS) published a report “Explaining Extreme Events of 2014: From a Climate Perspective”. This report addresses the natural and human causes of individual events. Climate change typically is discussed in long-term predictions or as average global temperature rise. However, this report shows that climate change already has effects. One of the biggest agreement was on the extreme heat events. All eight studies agree on the influence of human-induced climate change and the heat waves, regarding strength and frequency. However, the disagreement was on the role of the climate change in droughts since they depend on many meteorological, hydrological and societal factors combine.
     A drought is an extended period of dry weather caused by a lack of rain or snow. Examples of current droughts are the southwestern U.S., Brazil, South Africa and North Korea. Drought conditions could negatively affect agriculture, water supplies, energy production, and other aspects of society. The impacts vary depending on the type, location, intensity, and duration of the drought. During this summer my hometown, Puerto Rico, experience a drought, which in some area the water supplies was limited to 48 hours per week. You can analyze a drought based on the perspective of temperature or precipitation. As temperatures rise due to global climate change, more moisture evaporates from land and water, leaving less water behind. Some places are getting more rain or snow to make up for it, but other places are getting less. Another perspective that raised the vulnerability of a drought is the increase in population and water consumption.
Picture
Lake Oroville, CA, USA [http://www.ryot.org/before-and-after-california-drought-photos-water/793521]
​     Based on the papers, some droughts (Brazil) are caused by the population growth, others (Syria) were caused by the lack of rainfall linked to climate change; furthermore no role on human-induced climate change was found for the Northeast Asia droughts. However, the report explicitly states that the conclusion of “no influence” may be because to the methodology or observations are not enough to detect the influence. Those uncertainties and limitations rise another reason on why we need to advocate not only for climate change literacy, mitigation & adaptation but also for funding basic scientific research; but this will be a topic for another blog. Below is a video from NASA explaining the Megadroughts projected for American west.

​Additional Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/science/climate-change-extreme-weather-global-warming.html?_r=0
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/extreme-heat-defines-climate-change/
http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/weather-climate/drought.html
https://www2.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/explaining-extreme-events-from-a-climate-perspective/


4 Comments
kendall wales
18/11/2015 12:33:28 pm

i like the video from NASA but I don;t think america will take the greener solution very soon. companies want us depending on oil. The other thing is that the droughts by water consumption from over population will never stop, as we all need to take steps towards water efficiency. I think the damage is already done with the way our society is set up.

Reply
Thomas Aruta
22/11/2015 04:51:12 pm

I liked the video. I had no clue that world was suffering this bad. California is having serious problems, that's a lot of water loss! I think the damage has already been done with climate change. We can only help slow-en the damage now, not fix it.

Reply
sean eldridge
23/11/2015 07:07:53 am

I enjoyed the post mostly because it gave reason for drought other than just global warming. Of course these droughts could be caused by global warming, but there is also other "man-made" factors in play such as population movement and water usage, as listed by this article. This is not to say that i don't believe that global warming is "man-made", but i recognize now better the different catalysis's of drought specially. The real danger of drought is clear in the videos, but like a previous commentor posted I'm not sure if America will take any action.

Reply
Zoe Weiss
29/11/2015 07:39:55 pm

This was a very interesting video especially with the severe droughts that have been occurring in California. Being from the northeast this isn't a problem that seems real since we don't suffer from them. Aggressive actions however necessary will be difficult on such a large scale.

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