Thursday, October 28, 2010

Future of Drought Series

This post is for the purpose of maintaining a list of my blog series on the science of drought and global warming.

It's probably fair to have a disclaimer here. These are mostly written to be somewhat accessible for the lay reader. However, it should be borne in mind that I am not a climate scientist, and in particular, I haven't completely figured out what's going on here. There seem to be some notable inconsistencies in the science, and this series is really the process of me trying to get to grips with the situation. So caveat lector, as always...

Anyway, in order that they were posted:

Terrifying Drought Projections

This was when I had just read a new paper by Aiguo Dai on the projections for the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) in the IPCC AR4 models: I was pretty freaked out by the paper.  This post covers PDSI at a very basic level, and discusses the projections.

Recent History of Drought vs Models

This post looked at the somewhat imperfect fit between AR4 climate models and actual PDSI drought data for recent history.

Extracting Signal From Drought Noise

This post provided a short tutorial on principal component analysis, and illustrated the extraction of the global warming signal and the El-Nino signal from the drought data.

Should you Trust the PDSI?

This post gives a little more detail about how the PDSI is computed, and some comparisons of other indicators of drought.

The Hydrological Cycle Now

Quick background on the hydrological cycle now, and regional distribution of water stress, as context for future projections.

Northeast US Drought Getting Rarer

In the northeastern 13 states of the US, historical statistics show that pronounced droughts are getting less common, not more.

California PDSI Trends

California has been getting drier in recent decades, overall, but also with increased volatility - periods of great wetness interspersed amid the droughts.

No Tropical Drought in the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

A new paper suggests that tropical forests in Columbia and Venezuela did not experience drought or die-off during a major episode of global warming 55 million years ago.

Global Crop Yield Map

Briefly comparing where current crop yields are highest with where drought seems to be increasing.

Latest Palmer Drought Severity Trends

An update with new and more extensive comparisons of PDSI and streamflow and satellite data and the latest global drought trend maps.

Pliocene: Wetter than Today

Documenting that the Pliocene seems to have been generally wetter than recent climates - in contrast to projections for the climate under global warming where it seems to be getting drier.

Hadley Circulation in the Pliocene

An explanation of the currently favored hypothesis of why the Pliocene climate was generally wetter than the modern climate and drawing the contrast to the twenty-first century.

1 comment:

Alexander Ac said...

Thanks god, peak oil will stop us from destroying climate, or maybe not... :-)