Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Friday, April 6, 2007

Permanent Dust Bowl Could Be N.M. Future

Dry March Depletes State's Surplus Water

By John Fleck

New Mexico's snowpack took a dive in March, leading to a grim forecast of droughtlike runoff into the state's reservoirs this year.
A bonus left by wet weather in December and January is largely gone, thanks to a March that was warm and very dry.
"We really started off great guns," said Richard Armijo, a snow surveyor with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. "The thinking back then was 'It's going to be a really great season.' ''
But the storms slowed and the temperature warmed, depriving the region of the steady one or two storms a week needed to build a useful snowpack.
"You need a consistent winter season," said Ed Polasko, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service. "You can't take a month off and have a normal water supply. We took most of the month of March off."
When Armijo went Sunday to Elk Cabin, a snow measurement site in the Sangre de Cristos above Santa Fe, no snow was left to measure.
"It was gone," Armijo said.
Flow on the Rio Grande past Otowi in northern New Mexico is forecast to be 38 percent below normal, according to Tom Pagano, runoff forecaster at the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
By the time the Rio Grande reaches Elephant Butte, New Mexico's largest storage reservoir, the flow is forecast to be 54 percent below average.
The reservoir held just 48 percent of its normal supply on Sunday.
As a result, it is likely to drop low enough by late April or May that it will trigger rules preventing most upstream New Mexico water storage, according to Rolf Schmidt-Petersen at the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission. If that happens, all the water in the state's rivers must be sent straight downstream to Elephant Butte to meet New Mexico's legal obligations to Texas.
Upstream from Elephant Butte, conditions are better. El Vado Reservoir, where water is stored for irrigation in the Middle Rio Grande Valley, was slightly above normal Sunday.
Navajo Reservoir, on the San Juan River in northwest New Mexico, was 30 percent above average.
Despite the poor runoff forecast, there should be enough water in storage for New Mexico's water users to get what they need this year, Schmidt-Petersen said. That is considerably better than last year, he said, when almost no snow fell.
But there will be little water left in storage if there's another dry winter in 2007-08. Forecasters said this week that the Pacific Ocean is headed into a La Niña, a cool water pattern that tends to bring dry winters here.
"What happens next year?" Schmidt-Petersen asked.

From the Albuquerque Journal (06.07.07, pages A1 & A10)

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Friday, April 6, 2007

Permanent Dust Bowl Could Be N.M. Future

Water shortages in the American Southwest have been a more or less permanent fact of life for the last 50 years - a period during which the population of the region has grown more than ten-fold and readily extractable sources of groundwater have been depleted.

The most interesting feature of the article is the silence of impartial scirentists who know better than to spout such nonsense.

georgeob1 wrote:

Water shortages in the American Southwest have been a more or less permanent fact of life for the last 50 years - a period during which the population of the region has grown more than ten-fold and readily extractable sources of groundwater have been depleted.

Wait a minute! Are you saying that just because much of the Southwest has always been a desert, this means there has always been a water shortage there? No way, José!

Do I deserve this??

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Do I deserve this??

If suffered, then deserved. Our god is a just god.

But your and my Pope is German!

just listening to the weather network this morning .
a climatologist was asked how come that we can't rely on the forcast to tell us precisely what the weather is going to be tomorrow when there are are long-range predictions being made for the next 100 years .
he explained - quite well , i thought - that short-term forcasts and long-term predictions are two completely different branches of the science of climatology .

Mine is not. I spent a good portion of my earlier live in pursuit of a relationship with god. That pursuit was realized. In the end, we were both disappointed.

Stewart chose the menu for a gourmet meal that Simonyi will be taking to the ISS as a treat for his comrades in space. They plan a celebratory feast for April 12, which Russia observes as Cosmonauts' Day.

The menu includes quail roasted in Madiran wine, duck breast confit with capers, shredded chicken parmentier, apple fondant pieces, rice pudding with candied fruit, and semolina cake with dried apricots.

just listening to the weather network this morning .
a climatologist was asked how come that we can't rely on the forcast to tell us precisely what the weather is going to be tomorrow when there are are long-range predictions being made for the next 100 years .
he explained - quite well , i thought - that short-term forcasts and long-term predictions are two completely different branches of the science of climatology .