weather – Page 3 – Enviro Updates

SuzanneMarch 23, 2015Sonoma Coast, WildlifeEl Niño, sea lions, seabirds, weatherLeave a comment

Warm waters off Pacific coast upsetting biological balance, researchers say

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
“Unprecedented changes” that have warmed the ocean off the west coast of North America may portend a dramatic decline in the biological productivity of coastal waters, explaining recent strandings of emaciated sea lion pups and a mass die-off that began last fall of small seabirds called Cassin’s auklets.
That’s the word from fishery experts and ecologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who say populations of tiny organisms at the base of the marine food web already have diminished and could take a toll on everything from salmon to seals because of especially intense variability in regional weather patterns.

Scientists remain in “wait and see” mode, but, “Our guess is the primary productivity of zooplankton and phytoplankton will probably be reduced this year,” and perhaps even longer, said Toby Garfield, director of the Environmental Research Division at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla.

A shift in atmospheric winds and the flow of unusually warm waters south from the Gulf of Alaska have raised ocean surface temperatures between 2 to 6 degrees along a band of Pacific Ocean from Alaska to Mexico, according to Nate Mantua, leader of the landscape ecology team at the science center’s Santa Cruz facility.

“Right now, the ocean is very warm, and we have lots of indicators pointing to low productivity and low availability of some of the more normal prey items for things like seabirds and marine mammals, including seals and sea lions,” he said.

SuzanneJanuary 24, 2015Climate Change & Energy, Waterdrought, rain, weatherLeave a comment

Spring-like days mean drought drags on

Guy Kovner, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Near-record temperatures in the low 70s are expected today and Sunday in Santa Rosa, creating ideal conditions for enjoying the great outdoors but also adding to concerns that California could be in for an even longer drought.
Today’s forecast high of 72 degrees would fall just short of the record of 73 degrees, while Sunday’s projected high of 71 is a ways off the 76-degree record. Both records were set last year, the hottest in state history and the third year in the now four-year drought.
Read more via Warm weekend to flirt with records, but drought | The Press Democrat.

SuzanneJanuary 19, 2015Climate Change & Energy, Waterdrought, rain, weatherLeave a comment

California drought could end with storms known as atmospheric rivers

Tony Barboza, LOS ANGELES TIMES
California’s drought crept in slowly, but it could end with a torrent of winter storms that stream across the Pacific, dumping much of the year’s rain and snow in a few fast-moving and potentially catastrophic downpours.
Powerful storms known as atmospheric rivers, ribbons of water vapor that extend for thousands of miles, pulling moisture from the tropics and delivering it to the West Coast, have broken 40% of California droughts since 1950, recent research shows.
Atmospheric rivers are key to California’s rainfall.
"These atmospheric rivers — their absence or their presence — really determine whether California is in drought or not and whether floods are going to occur," said F. Martin Ralph, a research meteorologist who directs the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.
The storms, which flow like massive rivers in the sky, can carry 15 times as much water as the Mississippi and deliver up to half of the state’s annual precipitation between December and February, scientists say. Though atmospheric rivers are unlikely to end California’s drought this year, if they bring enough rain to erase the state’s huge precipitation deficit, they could wreak havoc by unleashing floods and landslides.
Scientists using a new type of satellite data discovered atmospheric rivers in the 1990s, and studies since then have revealed the phenomenon’s strong influence on California’s water supply and extreme weather.
via California drought could end with storms known as atmospheric rivers – LA Times.

SuzanneJanuary 18, 2015Waterdrought, rain, weatherLeave a comment

Another dry January? Winter’s wettest month failing to measure up

Guy Kovner, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Santa Rosa is on track to post a third straight abnormally dry January, historically the wettest month of the year, as California’s drought moves into its fourth year.
A light sprinkle Friday dropped 0.07 of an inch on Santa Rosa and brought the month’s total precipitation to 0.08 of an inch, with 0.10 to 0.20 of an inch more expected over the weekend, Accuweather meteorologist Ken Clark said.
If the forecast holds up, Santa Rosa would avoid breaking the rain-poor record of 0.10 of an inch set in 2014, on the heels of a meager 1.16 inches in January 2013.
But with no rain in next week’s forecast and a chance of some showers the following week, hopes for putting a dent in the drought now shift to February, Clark said. Water storage in the state’s major reservoirs and the Sierra Nevada snowpack are far below average.
Asked what’s in store for February, Clark said it “depends on whom you ask.”
“The rest of the winter,” he said, “is iffy.”
Santa Rosa typically gets 7.05 inches of rain in January and 6.4 inches in February.
The city’s last significant rain was about one-third of an inch on Dec. 20, and December overall delivered a welcome 14.49 inches, more than double the month’s 7.03-inch average. Since Dec. 21, Santa Rosa’s rainfall is about 2 percent of normal, Clark said.
via Another dry January? Winter’s wettest month failing to | The Press Democrat.

SuzanneJanuary 18, 2015Climate Change & Energydrought, extinctions, sea level rise, weatherLeave a comment

2014 breaks heat record, challenging global warming skeptics

Justin Gillis, NYTIMES.COM
Last year was the hottest on earth since record-keeping began in 1880, scientists reported on Friday, underscoring warnings about the risks of runaway greenhouse gas emissions and undermining claims by climate change contrarians that global warming had somehow stopped.
Extreme heat blanketed Alaska and much of the western United States last year. Records were set across large areas of every inhabited continent. And the ocean surface was unusually warm virtually everywhere except near Antarctica, the scientists said, providing the energy that fueled damaging Pacific storms.
In the annals of climatology, 2014 surpassed 2010 as the warmest year. The 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1997, a reflection of the relentless planetary warming that scientists say is a consequence of human activity and poses profound long-term risks to civilization and nature.
Read more via 2014 Breaks Heat Record, Challenging Global Warming Skeptics – NYTimes.com.

SuzanneDecember 16, 2014Waterdrought, rain, water storage, weatherLeave a comment

Is California's drought over?

Guy Kovner & Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Could it be 2012 all over again? That’s the year Santa Rosa was drenched by nearly 10 inches of rain in December before Mother Nature abruptly turned off the tap, continuing the three-year drought that still hasn’t ended, despite another soggy December.
With rain falling on 13 of the month’s first 15 days and now totaling 10.64 inches, folks who may be tiring of cloudbursts, gray skies, umbrellas and last week’s atmospheric river could well be wondering if the drought is done.
Not until the Sierra is blanketed in snow and the state’s major reservoirs are full, water managers said Monday, noting that neither of those drought-busting conditions is close to reality.
“We’re having a great, wet December. It’s fantastic,” said Brad Sherwood, spokesman for the Sonoma County Water Agency, which delivers Russian River water to 600,000 customers in Sonoma and Marin counties.
The latest storm dropped 1.3 inches of rain on Santa Rosa during the 24-hour period ending at 4 p.m. Monday, and more rain is expected to hit the area today and Wednesday, potentially bringing an additional 2 inches, the National Weather Service forecast.
But California, with 80 percent of the state under extreme or exceptional drought last week, needs sustained precipitation through the winter and spring to make up for a 36-month shortfall.
Read more via Is California’s drought over? (w/video) | The Press Democrat.

SuzanneDecember 5, 2014Climate Change & Energy, Waterdrought, global warming, water supply, weatherLeave a comment

California’s 'hot drought' ranks worst in at least 1,200 years

Tom Randall, BLOOMBERG.COM
Record rains fell in California this week. They’re not enough to change the course of what scientists are now calling the region’s worst drought in at least 1,200 years.
Just how bad has California’s drought been? Modern measurements already showed it’s been drier than the 1930s dustbowl, worse than the historic droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. That’s not all. New research going back further than the Viking conquests in Europe still can’t find a drought as bad as this one.
To go back that far, scientists consulted one of the longest records available: tree rings. Tighter rings mean drier years, and by working with California’s exceptionally old trees, researchers from University of Minnesota and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute were able to reconstruct a chronology of drought in southern and central California. They identified 37 droughts that lasted three years or more, going back to the year 800.
None were as extreme as the conditions we’re seeing now.

California temperature over century. — National Climatic Data Center

One of the oddities of this drought is that conditions aren’t just driven by a lack of rainfall. There have been plenty of droughts in the past with less precipitation. (The drought of 1527 to 1529, for example, was killer.) What makes this drought exceptional is the heat. Extreme heat.
Higher temperatures increase evaporation and help deplete reservoirs and groundwater. The California heat this year is like nothing ever seen in modern temperature records. The chart above shows average year-to-date temperatures in the state from January through October for each year since 1895.
Read more via California’s ‘Hot Drought’ Ranks Worst in at Least 1,200 Years – Bloomberg.

SuzanneNovember 2, 2014Climate Change & Energyagriculture, energy production, extinct species, flooding, food growing, ghg reduction, renewable energy, weatherLeave a comment

U.N. panel issues its starkest warning yet on global warming

Justin Gillisnov, NEW YORK TIMES
The gathering risks of climate change are so profound that they could stall or even reverse generations of progress against poverty and hunger if greenhouse emissions continue at a runaway pace, according to a major new United Nations report.
Despite growing efforts in many countries to tackle the problem, the global situation is becoming more acute as developing countries join the West in burning huge amounts of fossil fuels, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said here on Sunday.
Failure to reduce emissions, the group of scientists and other experts found, could threaten society with food shortages, refugee crises, the flooding of major cities and entire island nations, mass extinction of plants and animals, and a climate so drastically altered it might become dangerous for people to work or play outside during the hottest times of the year.
“Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” the report found.
In the starkest language it has ever used, the expert panel made clear how far society remains from having any serious policy to limit global warming.
Read more via U.N. Panel Issues Its Starkest Warning Yet on Global Warming – NYTimes.com.

SuzanneOctober 18, 2014Climate Change & Energy, Waterdrought, weatherLeave a comment

Winter forecast suggests drought worries not over for California

Matt Weiser, THE SACRAMENTO BEE

Weather Service foresees drought persisting into 2015

If ever there was a winter when California needed rain, this is it. One early prediction, however, offers little hope.
A winter outlook released Thursday by the National Weather Service suggests drought is likely to continue in many parts of California for a fourth straight year. Although that prediction is early and marked by some uncertainty, it’s enough to keep water officials on edge.
“California is now extremely vulnerable to water shortages,” said Kevin Werner, western regional climate services director at the National Weather Service. “The situation is unlikely to change even if we get an average winter.”
He noted the three-year drought now underway is the driest ever recorded in the state.
The forecast by the agency’s Climate Prediction Center is an effort to broadly frame what kind of weather lies ahead through January. This time frame encompasses a big share of the usual period in which California might hope for some drought relief. And the outlook is not encouraging.
According to the forecast, odds favor greater than average precipitation only in Southern California, mainly south of Bakersfield. While that is certainly a bright spot in the forecast, it is Northern California and its Sierra Nevada that need heavy precipitation to replenish rivers and reservoirs that supply water for two-thirds of the state’s population. There, no strong signal exists to suggest either wet or dry conditions, said Mike Halpert, acting director of the prediction center.
Read more via Winter forecast suggests drought worries not over for California | The Sacramento Bee.

SuzanneOctober 1, 2014Climate Change & Energy, Waterdrought, weatherLeave a comment

Droughts likely to be new normal for California

Daniel Swain & Noah Diffenbaugh
Whether viewed from a dry-as-dust ground level or from a sky-high planetary perch, the ongoing drought in California is remarkable.
As this slow-moving meteorological disaster intensifies, burning forests, fallowed agricultural fields and critically low reservoirs shows the increasingly high-stakes interactions among scientists, policymakers and everyday Californians.
This year is California’s third consecutive dry year, but the severity of the drought has dramatically increased over the past 12 to 18 months. As reported in our new paper, published Monday in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the drought now encompasses the driest consecutive 12-month period in California’s recorded history.
No single factor is to blame, but our new research shows that human-caused climate change has very likely increased the probability of at least one key cause.
For much of the past 18 months, a remarkably persistent ridge of atmospheric high pressure has been centered over the northeastern Pacific Ocean, deflecting storms north of their usual path and bringing two consecutive winter seasons without usually reliable rain and mountain snow.
Read more via Droughts likely to be new normal for California | The Press Democrat.

Environmental Center of Sonoma County

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