It's been 500 years since California has been this dry
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
There's been ongoing study of this weather phenomenon by various research institutions including Oregon State Univ. Apparently a "blob" of warmer-than-usual water in the northern Pacific is associated with the drought condition. It's uncertain if it's connected to global warming--that's a subject of ongoing study.
There's a lot more information here: http://www.climateprediction.net/new-climatology-results-for...
The graphic data presentation is quite interesting, e.g., comparing California, Oregon and Washington. The research relies on distributed computing to run experimental climate models, some HN readers might be interested in participating.
From the USGS:
"...This document summarizes the next major public project for MHDP, a winter storm scenario called ARkStorm (for Atmospheric River 1,000). Experts have designed a large, scientifically realistic meteorological event followed by an examination of the secondary hazards (for example, landslides and flooding), physical damages to the built environment, and social and economic consequences. The hypothetical storm depicted here would strike the U.S. West Coast and be similar to the intense California winter storms of 1861 and 1862 that left the central valley of California impassible. The storm is estimated to produce precipitation that in many places exceeds levels only experienced on average once every 500 to 1,000 years."
The ARkStorm has several public policy implications: (1) An ARkStorm raises serious questions about the ability of existing federal, state, and local disaster planning to handle a disaster of this magnitude. (2) A core policy issue raised is whether to pay now to mitigate, or pay a lot more later for recovery.[...]
I think we can all guess what the answer to #2 has been since :-(
If the lack of rain is random (like flipping a fair coin), the expected time to event would still be 1000 years. Believing that "heads" is more likely after a string of "tails" is the classic Gambler's Fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy
If on the other hand the current drought is caused by a change in climate, there is even less reason to believe that we are due for a gigantic amount of rain. If the coin is biased (bent) logic would conclude that one should bet that recent performance _is_ an indicator of future performance.
While it's not impossible for alternation to be most likely, it requires some physical process that would explain it. Interestingly, weather in the Central California often does follow multi-week cycles, with hot inland weather leading to rising air at the coast, leading to fog flowing inland, leading to a cooldown[1]. But I don't know of any process that would explain this for century scale rainfall. Do you?
[1] This article offers an explanation of the "fog cycle", but with the cautious wording "Until recent years, the conventional explanation for the fog’s behavior was a simple one". I wonder if there is now better knowledge: https://baynature.org/articles/cutting-through-the-fog/
Yes, El Nino, which may bring torrents of rain this winter to the US west coast. The combination with epic drought will be disastrous, whether or not if fulfills the mythic criterion of an "ArkStorm'
FYI: occurrence of rain or lack thereof is not like flipping a coin; this is more like a chaotic system with non-linear patterns evolving; once we see a large-scale pattern that occurs, and we identify it recurring through time such as El Nino, we can spot its tell-tale signs ahead of time and warn folks that worse may be on the way. Nevertheless, there are no guarantees, all we can do is wait and watch- But it certainly changes our Prior to know about these recurrent global-weather-scale patterns.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/el-nino-set-strongest-...
Yes, absolutely. El Nino is a fine reason to believe that the pattern will change. At a decadal scale, there is reason to believe that recent drought is a predictor of future rain. My point though was that there was not (a priori) a reason to believe that "It's been 500 years since California has been this dry" would imply "we are due" for a 1000 year storm.
Here's the link to their "classic" view of the article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/201...
Hmm... as someone currently living in Woodland - which is right on the other side of the causeway across the immediate spill area for those levies - I'm wondering how safe this winter will be. Woodland is an old town, so it's on slightly higher ground than some of the surrounding areas, but apparently that may not matter.
To that end, I created an animation, morphing between a google maps screen-cap, and the USGS map of the flood areas [2].
I didn't get the alignment just right, but from the look of it Woodland would appear to be underwater (at least, according to this USGS flood model).
That all said, is there really any evidence that a strong El Niño has anything at all to do with an ARkStorm? The Wikiepdia article on The Great Flood of 1862 [3] has this to say: "The weather pattern that caused this flood was not from an El Nino [sic]".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARkStorm#/media/File:Californi...
I may have misinterpreted the situation re: ARkStorm, and I agree something closer to a "strong El Niño" seems far more likely. Still, it's interesting to know that flooding in this area is at least plausible.
California could mitigate a lot of this, and probably will, eventually. But, it's only been about 6 years since the CRU email leaks led to it being dubbed "climategate" and a whole bunch of people loudly declared that it was proof that AGW was a vast climate scientist conspiracy. There's going to be a tremendous amount of resistance from all angles to any attempts to mitigate the effects of the climate in California.
So I started looking for work out of state a while ago, and will keep looking.
Nice place, but it would be dumb of me to stay here.
Where do you see the resistance coming from? The timescale here is interesting, because "driest in 500 years" implies that although this particular instance might be caused by human activity, that we are still in the range of natural variability. I'd guess that many people who fear upending civilization to avoid CO2 production would agree that a reliable water supply is a priority. Would concentrating on the issue (less water than demand) rather than the causes (anthropogenic or not) make it more likely for mitigation efforts to succeed?
Environmentalists don't want more dams constructed; agriculture doesn't want more water use regulation; industry doesn't want tighter environmental (or water) regulations; residents aren't going to be able to cut back on water usage much more; automobile manufacturers don't want further emissions cuts. Every single interest group wants to point to another interest group and say, "this situation is their fault, make them fix it instead."
I think a better question is, where do you not see resistance coming from?
> we are still in the range of natural variability
And does that make this a more comfortable living situation for you?
> I'd guess that many people who fear upending civilization to avoid CO2 production would agree that a reliable water supply is a priority.
It's true that the recent and continuing decline of carbon dioxide emissions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#/media/File:Yea...) is "upending civilization" -- we have never been worse off, as a species, than we are now -- but why we could expect those people to agree on how to get a reliable water supply is a mystery to me, given that they can't even be expected to agree on what the problem is.
> Would concentrating on the issue (less water than demand) rather than the causes (anthropogenic or not) make it more likely for mitigation efforts to succeed?
Well, I dunno, I guess. If people refuse to address the causes -- which, even in the face of overwhelming supporting evidence, they seem likely to do -- then I suppose the only remaining option is to decrease demand down to levels that can be supported by the relatively meager amounts of precipitation across the state.
Which, again, makes California sound like a pretty nice place to be from.
> And does that make this a more comfortable living situation for you?
Not more comfortable, but perhaps also not something for which we should immediately point the finger at CO2 emissions. I think a more important step for California is to re-asses its priorities for water use. The amount of groundwater that the farmers are pumping is absolutely insane -- agriculture in that environment doesn't make sense. In my area, the climate isn't quite as nice, but I can dig a 10ft deep hole in my horse pasture and it'll turn into a nice pond. No, you can't grow almonds and certain other trendy foods in the midwest ... but you can grow crops that will adequately feed the populace, and it's a far more ecologically responsible place to farm. We grow tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries, broccoli, green beans, blackberries, corn, and a few other things in our garden and most years I don't need to give it a drop of water from a hose. I've actually had to put a good deal of time, effort, and money into managing the water that runs off of our land (we have ~11 acres that all slope toward our house). The commercial corn field across the street has no irrigation system, at all. Although some farmers do it, watering with groundwater here is definitely the exception and not the norm.
... now if only the competition for software engineers were a bit more intense ... I blame the damn snow :).
> The amount of groundwater that the farmers are pumping is absolutely insane -- agriculture in that environment doesn't make sense.
This is the sort of statement I was talking about being frustrated with earlier. Given the overall growing conditions in California, it's insane not to farm as much of it as is practical. The water problem in California is complicated and multi-faceted, and it is not entirely the responsibility of agriculture to solve it. (Which isn't to say that they can't do a lot to help, either.)
We know that California has droughts and that those droughts can last many years. (50 year, 80 year droughts are not unknown).
Given that it is weird to allow agricultural water use without strict controls, realistic pricing, and beeter storage.
The trend right now is drier than anything else in the last thousand years. If this were merely another instance of the 1980's drought, we'd all be coping more or less OK. But, it's drier than that and we've added a lot of population since then and, as you point out, no additional water storage.
In general, there is resistance to everything everywhere. I wasn't asking rhetorically, I was specifically wondering what your thoughts were, since I've read and appreciated your comments for many years now. Personally, I think that concentrating on mitigation may be a better societal pragmatic strategy than concentrating on blame.
> * we are still in the range of natural variability*
> And does that make this a more comfortable living situation
> for you?
I think I disagree with your interpretation of Climategate, though, as I believe both that we are facing major ecological problems due to climate change (some portion of which is human caused) and that a large amount of climate science research is terribly flawed and untrustworthy. Not only are we lost, some of our more prominent scientific guides are not to be trusted.
> then I suppose the only remaining option is to decrease
> demand down to levels that can be supported by the
> relatively meager amounts of precipitation across the
> state.
> Which, again, makes California sound like a pretty nice
> place to be from.
Oh, sorry. I did misinterpret your comment. I might be getting a little punchy on this topic (this isn't the only place I've been having this argument -- I've really gotta quit doing this). (And thank you.)
> If the current drought is human caused, our chances of a return to a viable state are much lower.
FWIW I'm pretty optimistic about the long-term future, just not so much for the next 20 years or so, and I personally don't want to live through that particular transition. There's a ton of capital and vested interests in California; people will figure it out, probably roughly equal parts adjustments to how we live and engineering of the environment. For instance, if these conditions continue, it's going to become extraordinarily difficult for environmentalists to effectively oppose building new reservoirs, and as much as I usually agree with environmentalists, new reservoirs are one of the things that really need to happen in the state.
> ...a large amount of climate science research is terribly flawed and untrustworthy. Not only are we lost, some of our more prominent scientific guides are not to be trusted.
Totally honest question (which I might or might not rebut depending on your answer): what was it about the CRU emails that caused you to find climate scientists to be untrustworthy? I'm not aware of any findings of academic misconduct.
> Or possibly increase supply through desalinization
I'm not a big fan of desalinization on a large scale, personally, though I'm not totally informed on it. My understanding so far is that it's terribly expensive in both startup and ongoing costs (including energy costs), that there is still a significant distribution problem to be solved, and that it won't make economic sense during wet years when there is plentiful freshwater available everywhere (for a few months anyway).
> or reallocate supply with major changes to infrastructure.
I'd be happier to see this (and it is underway: http://www.socalwater.org/news/scwc-water-blog/376-why-a-del...). There's a lot of storm runoff in wet years that gets shunted straight to the ocean; it would be nice if significant amounts of it were captured, so long as it didn't leave the Delta and similar areas vulnerable to seawater incursions during storm surges.
> The bright side of that is that legal changes to water rights can go a long way toward reducing demand.
I worry about this. I don't see agriculture as a net negative; I think we need to do as much as possible to make sure that they don't have to dramatically reduce demand. There are some aspects of it that are very screwy right now and need fixing (http://www.npr.org/2015/08/06/430077437/the-twisty-logic-of-...) and I suspect there are some things that can be done, technologically, to maintain agricultural production with modest decreases in water supply, but I'd hate to see agriculture in the state slow down significantly. That would have effects on food supply all over the country (at least for a while until other areas started picking up the slack).
> Where do you see as more promising?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10219046
In short: I dunno. I'm open to suggestions.
(edit: not sure what you said to invite downvotes, I don't think it's deserved fwiw.)
> what was it about the CRU emails that caused you to find
> climate scientists to be untrustworthy?
While there were a few minor players who came off looking great (in my mind) several members of the leadership (in my mind) looked more like truth-twisting politicians than truth-seeking scientists. It wasn't a matter of smoking guns, rather lack of honorable exoneration for things that already concerned me. I agree that there were no findings of academic misconduct, but I don't think that shows the conduct was "becoming" of a good scientist.
I have to trust in the scientific process though. It's done pretty good so far, and I think that if there were serious flaws in the fundamental conclusions of climate science, one of the many good scientists out there would've pointed them out. (I'm using some weasel words here because I'd wager there are some disagreements among scientists in the field and I bet someone's going to come along and tell me so. But I doubt those disagreements would change statements like, "the planet is getting warmer", "humans are a significant contributing factor", "this is going to affect what we are accustomed to as 'normal' weather", and, "the west is going to get drier".)
When major constituencies can't agree on the problem, how do you get them to agree on a solution?
Just run some models and simulations and calculate where water usage is heaviest.
But, as much as I'm a complete raving lunatic fan of data-driven politics, there's still politics involved. The data doesn't really tell you what to do, which was jcranmer's point, and mine. At best it just tells you what not to do.
This is a serious problem, and I'm not trying to belittle it. But as I recall, you can give people a gallon of water anywhere in California for just a few pennies, maybe less. To interested outsiders, the issue here seems to be almost entirely a political one.
I'm curious to know what you consider the safest places in terms of environmental safety and sustainability.
There are a few things I'm not fond of: tornadoes, wildfires, periods of extended drought, heavy traffic, extremely high crime, dislike for Californians (Oregon & Montana). A few things I don't mind: cold and snowy Winters (it's just mountaineering with more infrastructure and support), regular storm seasons, earthquakes and hurricanes. A few things I really appreciate: mountains within a couple hours' drive, lots of outdoor activities, younger and more active and better-educated populations. Maybe Utah? (But: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-utah-drought-20150530-st...)
Unfortunately, snowfall over the entire Rockies seems to be on a declining trend (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/news/2011-06-10-clima...), so any place that relies on the Rocky Mountain watershed is going to be dealing with drier conditions for the foreseeable future.
I'm open to suggestions.
Have you considered that the dislike for Californians is due to them turning any state in which a great number of them settle…into California?
It's a perfectly natural process: whenever we leave a place, even if we dislike some aspects of it, it's still our home. We're liable to find our new homes just fine, oh 'except for just a few things.' Add up enough ex-pats, and razor-fine margins on many issues, and suddenly a relatively small number of people can have a relatively high impact on a state, while the natives residents look about themselves and wonder what the hell happened to their own homes.
Those natives then move, and the process repeats itself…
http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Class...
It's an interesting essay, but I would call your attention reason six.
For near term stability and economic resilience the Pacific Northwest won't be too bad until it's wrecked by a bunch of people fleeing the bay area ( some say this has already happened ).
Optimists can hope for a global government that would undertake climate mitigation in the name of long term species survival. Pessimists will suggest that we start learning to colonize Antartica ( which already has a permanent population of around 5000 humans ).
The two scenarios that bookend the spectrum of possibility for climate change are:
1. The interglacial world - risings seas, resource wars and ecological upheaval
2. The hot Venus scenario - literally turning the earth into something that resembles Venus in atmosphere and environment.
Our civilization may be more resilient than our engineers would credit it to be. But it is not infinitely so. This is a game humanity can lose. Our species may be part of the great die-off that is currently winnowing most multicellular life on this planet.
Not only is global warming real, it could kill you and yours sooner rather than later.
Everyone is focusing on the drought right now, for good reason, but if it's not too late, and we go back to normal rain levels; I have found floods, landslides, and earthquakes to be California's warts. I have seen families lose everything to these disasters.
And while Insurance companies happily accept our insurance premiums--they cover less and less each year.
These policies, which have pages of exclusions, basically just cover fire.
This year they will be paying out, but for as long as I can remember residential/commercial fires are going down each year, but you wouldn't know it by listening to to the media, and the "Head of whatever". Yes, I know this year Firefighters are really busy, and it's because of the drought.
I do know most fire personnel(exception this year) hardly ever see a fire. Modern building codes have have really made structures safe. Most of their time is spent on medical emergencies. Something like 90% plus?
Anyway, I sometimes think California's Insurance commissioner does pretty much what our illustrious Luitentant Governor does; Nothing?
As to leaving California, I think the only reason, I would leave is rent, and housing costs. I can't believe it costs so much to live in California, at least within 30 miles of the coast. It's the rent that keeps me up at night. I am close to being homeless. Most of my income goes to rent in one way, or another. Whenever I hear someone brag about their income, in my head, the real question is "what does it cost to keep a roof over your head? I know my landlord can have a butt twitch, and decide to raise my rent, and I will be homeless. I don't like feeling so Helpless! And it's not so easy to just pick up and move to an area of lower rent. It's kids in school. It's that job, that's only in the Bay Area. It's getting older and not wanting to abandon the few friends, or family members you are close too. It's just not easy I guess, but living off the land in Alaska is looking good? No, I've been in CA too long. I couldn't kill an animal. Yes--I will now shut-up. Sorry about the rant. Tired.