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Uncategorized Monday, October 15th 2012 at 6:38 pm

This Summer’s Drought Could Be the New Normal. I Hope You Didn’t Like Trees!

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Remember how we had all those droughts all over the country last summer, and all over the world the summers before that? Well, it turns out rather than “economically crippling worldwide drought,” you may just want to start referring to that situation by its new name: “Summer.” According to a study in the journal Nature Climate Change, the droughts of the last several years could just be the new normal if climate change predictions pan out. If that’s the case, say researchers, forests could become a thing of the past. So, y’know, if those are your thing, I guess take a picture now?

The study analyzed 1,000 years of tree rings, which can tell researchers a lot more than just how old a tree is. When looked at by someone who knows what they’re doing, tree rings can also provide information about how much moisture a tree held in a given season, how much stress it was under at different times in its life, and even how much precipitation occurred, making them excellent ways to learn more about our climate in the past. That in turn lets us be more terrified about the climate in the future, especially when you take into account things like this little gem: According to the study, this year’s drought was the worst the southwest U.S. has seen in about 600 years.

Of course, it’s not just trees that feel the effects of drought. Changing precipitation factors can make dry areas drier, stoking wildfires like the ones that ravaged Colorado mere months ago, and drive up grain prices, which can shift food prices in general.

With droughts predicted to only get worse in the coming decades as weather patterns continue to change, the situation doesn’t look to get any rosier any time soon, meaning that in some parts of the world, forests will just be a thing you tell your grandkids about, like land lines and Social Security benefits. You will tell those stories in hushed and dreamlike tones, wondering if you even believe these strange, beautiful works of wonder could really have existed, just before the pack of mostly feral children set upon you, devouring you messily.

This is all a little bit grim for our tastes, though. Can’t we concentrate on the upside of all this? An entire North American continent possessed of the bleak beauty of the American Southwest, for example. It will be just like living inside a Cormac McCarthy novel, only with less exactly as many roving gangs of murderers hunting you to steal your canned food.

(via PhysOrg)

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  • Anonymous

    Science has never said it will happen, only might happen. Do we WANT this misery to be real?
    REAL planet lovers are glad a crisis was exaggerated.
    Science says we are at the brink “maybe” yet they still refuse to say any crisis “will” happen. Not one single IPCC report of crisis is without “could be” and “likely” etc.
    HELP MY HOUSE IS ON FIRE, MAYBE?
    And get up to date:
    *Occupywallstreet does not even mention CO2 in its list of demands because of the bank-funded carbon trading stock markets run by corporations.
    *Obama has not mentioned the crisis in the last two State of the Unions addresses.
    *Julian Assange is of course a climate change denier.
    *Canada killed Y2Kyoto with a freely elected climate change denying prime minister and nobody cared, especially the millions of scientists warning us of unstoppable warming (a comet hit).
    Romney will thank us for fear mongering more votes his way.

  • Jack Bond

    Sigh. Temperatures are beginning to cycle down. This is not a crisis.

  • http://twitter.com/KennyZ3D Kenny Zaborny

    Wait…drought? What drought? It rained for 2 solid months where I live. Torrents of rain. every. single. day.

  • Kenny the MORON

    Yes, perhaps it escaped your razor sharp observation skills but the midwest has been facing a rainfall shortage that rivals the dustbowl of the ’30s. It’s nice to hear that it actually rained for at least 60 days consecutively in your area without flooding.

  • Jack the MORON

    That’s called the fall season and isn’t actual climate change, idiot.

  • http://twitter.com/PestControlCtr Pest Control Center

    Pure alarmism. If the earth is warming we should look to mideval times as an indicator. Back then the earth was 8 (that’s eight) degrees warmer. Rain still fell. Forests thrived. Humanity did well (except for that brief Boubonic Plague outbreak). Greenland was being farmed and the oceans did not rise.

  • idlethoughts

    You do realize that no amount of evidence would ever allow a scientist to say that something which is caused by humans will happen, that’s because it hasn’t happened yet an could still be prevented. Also you should know that reality doesn’t really care what you want to be real, if somethings true then no amount of wishful thinking and sticking your head in the sand can change it.

  • Idlethoughts

    Dude, don’t even try, if logic an scientific evidence could change Jack’s mind he would have already found it on the internet. Don’t waist your time, arguing with him has been tried before, it won’t work.

  • Idlethoughts

    Look up the difference between climate and weather.

  • http://twitter.com/KennyZ3D Kenny Zaborny

    I guess that’s what I get for trying to be funny on the internet. However, it can and did rain for 60 days here. Pensacola suffered some of the worst flooding they’ve experienced outside of a hurricane in decades. Perhaps you saw the videos of that?

    I am quite aware of the drought conditions of the midwest and believe me, I was hoping some of the rain plaguing us would go that direction. I apologize for my failed attempt at humor.

  • gargle

    Try again. There’s a reason why it’s called GLOBAL warming. Yes, during medieval times, some parts of the globe were abnormally warm (the causes of which are known), and some parts were much, much cooler than today. Overall the average GLOBAL temperature is higher today than it was during the medieval warm period, and it’s continuing to increase at a rate never before seen in nature.

    Don’t cling to a single sound bite that says what you want to hear and conclude that the problem doesn’t exist. How is a conclusion “alarmist” when it is supported, overwhelmingly, by scientific evidence based on endless experimentation from a global army of scientists independently arriving at the same conclusions? There is not one peer reviewed paper that casts reasonable doubt on man-made global warming. The most alarming thing here is the number of people so eager to blindly ignore entire bodies of scientific evidence in favor of something they read on a blog.

  • gargle

    It’s not “fear mongering” when someone extrapolates a reasonable scenario based on evidence, experimentation, and the current course of events. Nobody wants a global catastrophe, which is exactly why it’s critical to a) acknowledge the problem and b) do something about it. Denialism is far too common in the U.S.

    If a dentist tells you that you’ll get cavities unless you start brushing/flossing your teeth, are you going to say “that’s fear mongering! the science doesn’t say it’s 100% certain! Obama didn’t mention anything about Colgate!” …or are you going to trust that it’s probably a good idea to brush your teeth?

    It’s not “alarmism” when the consequences of inaction are genuinely alarming. Sticking your head in the sand and hoping everything will turn out okay is actually a bad idea more often than not.

  • Jack Bond

    Sounds like you’re uninformed. Temperatures cycle up and down in larger scale over many many years. We’ve just recently hit the peak and are starting to cycle back down.