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Science News

Climate Change Doubles Drought Stricken Area 287

Posted by samzenpus from the more-dry-skin dept.
Cally writes "The National Atmospheric Research Center has published research showing that the percentage of Earth's land area stricken by serious drought more than doubled from the 1970s to the early 2000s, and attributing this to global climate change. Interestingly, the lead author comments that 'droughts and floods are extreme climate events that are likely to change more rapidly than the average climate'."
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Climate Change Doubles Drought Stricken Area More

Climate Change Doubles Drought Stricken Area

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  • from the dawn of time the climate has been changing! what makes them think it shouldn't now?
    • When it rarely gets too hot in my apartment I change the climate by turning on the air conditioning because it makes the climate more suitable for me.

      I don't see why humans shouldn't seek to make the global climate better for us. If moving to resist global warming (whether 'natural' or not) helps us make the world a better place for sustaining our life then it sounds like a reasonable idea on the face of it.

      Saying "it's been happening from the dawn of time" is stupid. So have tsunamis. So has disease. It
      • When it rarely gets too hot in my apartment I change the climate by turning on the air conditioning because it makes the climate more suitable for me

        What you're actually doing is taking the 'heat' and moving it outside into the external environment, heating up the outside world by a miniscule amount. The amount of heat you generate by cooling your room is actually greater than the decrease inside, due to inevitable inefficiencies in the system. It's literally a heat exchanger.

        So are you proposing some so
        • So are you proposing some sort of planet-sized air conditioner or something
          Don't be a fucktard.
        • " planet-sized air conditioner or something?"

          Why not? Earth as a whole sit's at ~300 deg kelven block say 1percent of incomeing energy and you drop around 5 deg C.

          So: (3963.19 * 3963.19 * pi ) *.01 =493,446.03 sq miles. Or 18585 * 493,000 = 9 billion Roll's of Reynolds Wrap Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil - 18'' x 1000'.

          Now all this needs to be in orbit with some way of keeping things aligned and overhead so the total weight may be 10 times that but it's still posible... or Not.

          Anyway, as bad as tha
    • from the dawn of time the climate has been changing! what makes them think it shouldn't now?

      Like, I know, and look at all those particle physicists writing papers about atomic reactions that have been changing from the dawn of time.

      Hint: find out the difference between climate and weather. Differentiating between the two is what the climatologists are trying to do here.


    • > from the dawn of time the climate has been changing! what makes them think it shouldn't now?

      We're going to suffer the consequences regardless. It seems that we're being forced into the terraforming business whether we want to or not.

    • just when I'm hating it?

      Climate arguments are like war in the Middle East. The people can't live happily without it.

      • from the dawn of time the climate has been changing! what makes them think it shouldn't now?

      I'm sure you're just trolling for comments, and here's one more to consider:

      From the dawn of time people have died of hunger and disease. What makes us think we shouldn't now?

  • Can't Blame Global Warming? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by physicsphairy ( 720718 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:19PM (#11343363)
    There are two ways that droughts are produced. 1. less precipitation 2. precipitation drops in the wrong places.

    Global warming produces increased precipitation.

    So what's changing the wind patterns?

    • I think salinity has a huge deal to do with it. Salinity kills everything around, making dry, arid country, the heat from the sun during the day builds up in the ground, and gets released at night, obviously if there is a hot updraft, it prevents rain or clouds from forming. If it gets hot enough (As it does where I am) the updraft actually pushes the clouds aside, and the precipitation falls over places of less thermal value, i.e. the sea.

    • Um, read the article? (Score:3, Informative)

      by rewt66 ( 738525 )
      Increased temperature causes increased evaporation from the soil. So the soil is, on average, drier.
    • That's the problem. The Earth itself keeps doing little things that should remind us just how insignificant we are. An erupting volcano puts out enough pollution that "green" scientist say it masks all of our human caused global warming. An earthquake causes a tsunami and changes water levels in Virginia.
      • An erupting volcano puts out enough pollution that "green" scientist say it masks all of our human caused global warming.

        Not according to this page: [nodak.edu] Present-day carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from subaerial and submarine volcanoes are uncertain at the present time. Gerlach (1991) estimated a total global release of 3-4 x 10E12 mol/yr from volcanoes. This is a conservative estimate. Man-made (anthropogenic) CO2 emissions overwhelm this estimate by at least 150 times.

        It is amazing that folks will repeat a

      • n erupting volcano puts out enough pollution that "green" scientist say it masks all of our human caused global warming.

        Whihc scientist? Name him.

    • Re:Can't Blame Global Warming? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Stevyn ( 691306 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @09:21PM (#11344047)
      Ugh...global warming does not mean the earth temperature increases everywhere by the same amount. It changes weather patterns. Some places may get hotter, other colder. Some places may flood, others experience a drought.

      I mean I know the phrase "global warming" sounds like the temperature everywhere will just increase by a degree or so, but jesus christ, why doesn't anyone ever take a few moments out to learn what it really does before forming an opinion on it.
      • Forgive me, Taco, for what I am about to do...

        jesus christ, why doesn't anyone ever take a few moments out to learn what it really does before forming an opinion on it.

        Hmm... 691306... you're new here, aren't you. Welcome to slashdot, where the ability to (insert preferred menial technical activity) makes you an instant expert on every topic under the sun, from business practices, the law, IC engineering, and... (the favourite hangout for the ill-informed trolls) climate change and modelling!

        To be f

    • Global warming causes more evaporation, so there is more moisture in the air. So far, so good. Now it gets complex. :)

      Reflective areas reflect the heat, so creating warmer air. This means it is less likely to rain in such places. The air holds onto the moisture it has that much better. Reflective areas are typically desert regions, so those regions will become even dryer. (The Arctic and Antarctic are considered cold deserts, as the total amount of precipitation is extremely low.)

      Absorptive areas hold o

    • There are two ways that droughts are produced. 1. less precipitation 2. precipitation drops in the wrong places.

      Global warming produces increased precipitation.

      So what's changing the wind patterns?

      Global warming, of course.

      Not that, as others have pointed out, that changes in wind patterns are the only things causing increased drought; but the atmsophere is a heat engine, and wind is (by and large) air moved by heat differential - in other words, convection. The hotter the atmosphere, the m

  • Maybe the Droughts are causing the climate change? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by slashkitty ( 21637 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:19PM (#11343366) Homepage
    Or at least the development, farming, clear cutting in those areas has caused it. Places where they measure temperature and rainfall the most are areas that are developed the most. The real question here is are these really long term changes or just natural fluctuations. 5, 30, 100 years are not long term in the scheme of things here.
    • I'd have thought an increase in droughts is climate change rather than a cause or effect of same.

    • To a degree. (Score:3, Informative)

      by jd ( 1658 )
      Clear-cutting reduces the amount of heat the ground can absorb. (Plantlife absorbs a LOT of radiation from the sun.) That heat is going to go somewhere. If it can't be turned into sugars via photosynthesis, or be absorbed into the ground, then it is going to be reflected back up.

      Any time any radiation travels through the air, a certain fraction will get absorbed. This means that all that newly-reflected energy will result in the air becoming much warmer than it would otherwise have done.

      This does not mi

    • caused it. Places where they measure temperature and rainfall the most are areas that are developed the most

      Actually, the places with the most long term record of rainfall and pollution are the least developed in the world. They are the north and south poles, where core samples can show relative snow fall (i.e. rainfall) and greenhouse gasses/other forms of pollution. One of the people I worked with did a PhD in the 1980's that showed that there have been substantial increases to the average temperature
    • If you read the article (and I'd love to find the actual paper, but I don't think it's up oni any prepreint servers yet - the Meeting where they're presenting isn't for some time) they used some proxy measurements and well-understood modelling techniques to extend their dataset, both spatially and time-wise.

  • Wet West Texas (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't know about most places but my part of West Texas went from 9 inches or rain in 2003, to more that 53 inches of rain in 2004. Thats the most rain that my county has seen since it was settled in the early 1900's.

    Tim
    • Oh, great, now we get to hear complaints that the U.S. is now hogging all the world's water...

    • > I don't know about most places but my part of West Texas went from 9 inches or rain in 2003, to more that 53 inches of rain in 2004. Thats the most rain that my county has seen since it was settled in the early 1900's.

      For whatever anecdotes are worth, both my hometown and my current domicile now experience longer dry spells punctuated by brief but intense wet spells compared to what they had a few decades ago. Overall my hometown has gotten drier, but oddly the net precipitation where I live now has

  • It looks like the world's climate has changed a lot. When I was a kid, the winter started around Dec 20th and lasted until late March where I live. Nowadays, in the last few years, if we had any snow it was in November, with nothing during the time when the winter was supposed to be, with perhaps another strike of snow around April. Such "two springs" years became nearly a rule lately -- with a screwed up effect on the vegetation.

    Ah, I'm just 26, so that "when I was a kid" is not that far ago. Such a r
    • So based on 8-10 years of data you extrapolate that winter MUST be between Dec20th and March, and that because another data set a decade is different it must be severe caused by climate change due to global warming.
      The world climate hasn't changed a lot, your local climate has. Natural fluctuations means someplaces get hotter, some places get cooler, but overall there is very little difference in the climate. If the overall temperature or weather patterns change even by a little, you'll see catastrophic l
      • Happily, some of us out here in /.-land are, rather than isolated individuals, members of a larger society, which includes members much older than us. We can get an oral history of how things used to be, aquiring data that reaches back well before our births.
        And some of our societies even have a tradition of literature. Through the written word, we can know conditions long before the birth of any member of our society.
        It is thus that we know that SOME SHIT AIN'T RIGHT. Locally, I know that Wisconsin has had
    • I was about to ask if you live in the Midwestern United States, because that sounds _EXACTLY_ like the climate changes I've experienced in the 27 years I've been alive. Then I look at your email address, and it looks to me like you live in Poland? Then again, we have very similar climates, from what I understand. Might make sense that they would change in the same way.

      I also remember that when I was a little kid, snowbanks would reach well above my head, nowadays it hardly ever reaches above my knee.
      • I also remember that when I was a little kid, snowbanks would reach well above my head, nowadays it hardly ever reaches above my knee.

        Well, I'm afraid that's not due to a climate change.

        It's because you grew taller.

        • Yeah... that part is actually a joke my dad used to make back then. Took me a while to get it. THere is a difference, though: the snowbanks were probably mid-thigh high on him or so. Oh, and once snow fell, it was actually likely to stay around. I can't think of one winter since I started college where there was not a major that in January. Case in point it is currently 47F (8C) and there is a thunderstorm outside. I guess I would actually have to talk to a climatologist to see if this is really wie
    • Climate hasn't done anything. It is extremely irresponsible and irrational to say something like "The climate is changing!" when you're looking at it on a scale of twenty years.

      I'd like to see what has happened with these drought stricken areas over the past 50 years, past 100 years, and past 200 years. Let's see what the overall effect is. Otherwise it is no different than saying, today it was 55F, last week it was 35F. The world's climate is changing by 20F/week!

      Remember, the weather is allowed to chang

  • Drought and land use?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by coffeecan ( 842352 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:50PM (#11343700)
    I was supprised that this article doesn't mention the effect of land use over climate change. One of the fastest ways the increase the local tempeture of an area is to cut down all the trees (raise by 2-3 degrees C). Remember over=grazing of the mid west led to the dust bowl during the great depression. Sadly a lot of developing nations use bad farming practaces, and that is why deserts are the only ecosystems still expanding today.

  • This seems very wrong = central U.S. wetter (Score:3, Interesting)

    by puzzled ( 12525 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @09:10PM (#11343916) Journal


    It says the central U.S. is wetter but the man made lakes in western Nebraska are toast - McConaughy is at something like 32% of full and they're going to dry up three smaller downstream lakes to keep it at least partially full next summer.

    Maybe its a fifty year average and the last five have been bad ...
  • I'm more inclined to believe that the shit we pump into the atmosphere, combined with the earth changing naturally, is going to cause more extremes. Not warming or cooling, but more extremes more often. More droughts, more floods, more snowstorms, more of anything but normal weather conditions.


    • > I'm more inclined to believe that the shit we pump into the atmosphere, combined with the earth changing naturally, is going to cause more extremes. Not warming or cooling, but more extremes more often. More droughts, more floods, more snowstorms, more of anything but normal weather conditions.

      Global warming = more thermal energy in the atmosphere. IANAPlanetologist, but I wouldn't be the least surprised to find that more thermal energy --> more meterological extremes.

  • NARC? (Score:2)

    by Orp ( 6583 )
    Er, It's "National Center for Atmospheric Research" (pronnounced "en-car") ... not NARC.
  • In the seventies, it was all about Global Cooling: http://www.globalclimate.org/Newsweek.htm

    Pretty soon, it will be back in vogue again...

  • Global warming (Score:3, Informative)

    by mikec ( 7785 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @12:35AM (#11345520)
    I don't know if global warming exists, and, if it does I don't know what the effects will be. However, I'm a bit cynical, for the following reasons.

    1. A lot of scientific theories have been very popular and well accepted for quite a while before they are disproven. Epicycles. The aether. Phlogiston. Eugenics. Cold fusion. The coming ice age in the 70's. So wide acceptance by itself doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

    2. Having been a university professor for a while, I understand the intense conflict of interest that researchers experience. On the one hand, climatologists would like to tell the truth. On the other hand, they know beyond the shadow of a doubt that if they held a conference tomorrow and all agreed that global warming wasn't happening, their lives and the lives of their families would all change for the worse. They would lose funding and graduate students, their salaries would drop, they'd have more trouble publishing papers, they'd have to teach more undergraduate classes, some would not get tenure, etc. So there is a huge incentive to interpret ambiguous data in such a way as to keep the global warming in the news.

    3. The data is very noisy and ambiguous. Climatologists are trying to pull a trend out of data that has a lot of natural variation, that has a lot of measurment error, and that is very incomplete. Also, since global warming is now the "standard" view, journal reviewers will examine papers that do not tend to support global warming a lot more carefully than papers that do support global warming. If your paper weakly supports global warming, it is much more likely to be published than a paper that weakly undermines global warming. ("Extraordinary results require extranordinary evidence.")

    4. The theory keeps changing. It is not longer just warming. It's almost any change in climate at all. More hurricanes than average? Fewer hurricanes than average? The Sahara is growing? The Sahara is shrinking? The US midwest is getting drier? Getting wetter? The theory of global warming has gotten so flexible that all these scenarios are apparently consistent with it. If a theory predicts anything then it has no predictive power at all.
    • IANAClimatologist, but this chart doesn't look like some kind of noisy trend: Atmospheric CO2... [hope.edu] (from Antarctic Ice Cores and Environmental Change [hope.edu]).

      Do we know that increased CO2 is correlated with global temperature? I won't say either way because I haven't read a paper on the topic.

      Should we be concerned that *maybe*, just *maybe* our activities might be rendering the planet unlivable? I think so. If there were a 1 in 1000 chance buying car make X would result in a fatal (for you) car accident, would

    • Re:Global warming (Score:2, Insightful)

      by matrem ( 806375 )
      Please check out this faq [freeserve.co.uk] if you make claims about noisy and ambiguous data.

      I also disagree with your other points:

      1. A lot of theories were popular and well accepted before they are disproven. True, but a lot more theories are accepted and turn out to be true. Also, a LOT of theories are not well accepted and turn out to be wrong. If you are not a climate scientist, this cannot be an argument AGIANST global warming.

      2. As a university professor, you know that a theory is only as strong as the argument

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