California Still Drought? Yes, No, and Maybe — Part 1

Kip Hansen’s news analysis — January 26, 2023

It has been suggested that despite being flooded, washed away, landslides and buried in snow, California is actually still in a state of drought.

Article in the New York Times Despite rainstorms, California is still drought, written by three journalists Elena Shao, Mira Rojanasakul and Nadja Popovichsaid that “the sudden flood did not make up for the years of prolonged drought”.

cliff volumeProfessor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Washington, and host Cliff Mass Weather BlogAnother opinion: The drought in California is over. definitive.

The New York Times journalists are often asked to write the newspaper’s Hysteria Climate Report, in which everything about weather and climate must be portrayed as having a negative impact. So their stories of California’s past weeks of stormy weather have all been “catastrophic,” and now they must emphasize that despite the rain, California is still in a state of drought.

Dr. Cliff Mass carefully refutes this claim in his piece linked above, which is repost here at WUWT.

But let’s try to be a little more scientific indifferent.

Maybe both Are the claims and counterclaims correct? Is that possible? Yes, a lot like that.

How could that be true?

1) Difference in definition. Based on Drought.gov (the Web of National Integrated Drought Information System):

“Drought is usually defined as “a lack of rainfall over an extended period of time (usually a season or more), resulting in water shortages.”

“However, as the various definitions to the right illustrate, drought can be difficult to define—in fact so difficult that by the early 1980s, researchers had found more 150 definitions of drought publishedreflect regional differences, needs and approaches.”

Definitions given by Drought.gov include:

Merriam-Webster Dictionary: “Dry periods especially when prolonged.”

American Meteorological Association: “Unusually dry weather long enough to cause severe hydrological imbalances.”

NOAA’s National Weather Service: “A moisture deficiency results in adverse effects on people, animals, or vegetation over a large area.”

Thus, factors associated with “drought” include drought, duration, impact, duration, geographic area, and climate type (not mentioned).

Dry: Of what? soil? Lack of rain or snow? Lake level, lake level, river flow, groundwater level? Humidity? (and what might a ‘hydrological imbalance’ be?) Most drought claims are based on rainfall as a “percentage below normal” (month, year-to-date, etc.) ).

Duration: “If a weather pattern results in a rainfall deficit that lasts for weeks or months, it is considered a short-term drought. If the pattern and rainfall shortages persist for more than six months, it is generally considered a long-term drought. ” [ source – drought.gov  ]

But we know that drought can also last for years, decades, centuries and millennia (North Africa).

Impact: There are many different types of droughtsclassified by their type:

• Meteorological drought is based on the degree of aridity or lack of rainfall and the length of the dry period.
• Hydrological drought based on the impact of rainfall deficits on water supplies such as stream runoff, reservoir and groundwater levels, and groundwater table decline.
• agricultural drought refers to the impacts on agriculture by factors such as lack of rainfall, lack of water in the soil, reduction in groundwater or reservoir water levels required for irrigation.
• Socio-economic drought examines the impact of drought conditions (meteorological, agricultural or hydrological drought) on the supply and demand of certain economic goods such as fruits, vegetables, grains, and meat. Socioeconomic drought occurs when the demand for an economic good exceeds supply due to a shortage of water supplies related to weather.

Duration: This especially applies to short-term agricultural droughts – or lack of drought. Light rains in spring, allowing planting and germination of crops (more or less at the right time) are fine, but heavy rains in spring can hinder planting until the end of the season, and when taking into account the drought, not enough Rain at the time of planting or a short-term drought that prevents germination or dries out newly emerging shoots.

When drought – lack of rain – occurs when crops are maturing, it can lead to almost complete crop failure. Too much rain at that time could damage the crop.

Geography: 10 inches of rain per year in Scotsdale, Arizona (a desert city) is normal, but would be severe drought in Seattle, Washington, where the average is 38 inches per year. The county where I live is quite small, however, after a wet winter so far, dry.gov tells me that the southern part of his county is “drought.”

Our media and press too often talk about political units as if they were geographic units – using State and County and Country boundaries as if they define weather, climate and other natural phenomena.

In our case today, California is not a Climate Zone, without a single weather pattern or expectation, nor can California be simplified to Northern and Southern California.

Climate Type: Most people know that there are different types of climates by region. Rainforests, deserts, Mediterranean (and apparently dietary) climates. Steppe and high mountains and polar ice caps. In fact, there are many and varied types of climates. The most commonly used classification today is Köppen–Geiger . climate classification system, in which climates are divided into five major climate groups, with each group divided based on seasonal rainfall and temperature patterns.

A quick glance at the map allows us to identify the region of the great scarlet deserts and tundra bands in the northern hemisphere. Blue like the rainforests of South America, Africa and the island nations between Southeast Asia and Australia. (Note: The chart above omits the “H Highland/Timberline” as found in High Sierras of California).

What about California?

A look at the map and list of 11 climates found in California gave us most of what we needed to know: Almost all descriptions (view larger here) includes the words “arid”, “arid”, “Mediterranean” or “hot”. The larger deserts of the southeast, the Mojave and Colorado, are evident, but not so obvious, as the semi-arid/steppe environments of the southern Central Valley and much of coastal Southern California begin It begins in the Los Angeles Basin and continues south to the border with Mexico. North of Los Angeles, starting from Santa Barbara (where I went to college) all the way to the northern border with Oregon, the adjoining coast (west of the coastal mountains) has a wonderfully mild and somewhat mysterious climate. hidden known as the “Mediterranean/summer mist” (which Monterey, Santa Cruz and Big Sur and Coastal redwood forest too famous).

Not available a climate that’s California.

When people say that California is still/no more drought, what do they mean?

That is the problem. One has to be very careful when talking about drought, and The New York Times’ The crew certainly didn’t. Cliff Mass covers a lot of territory and gives us charts and carts of various drought indicators.

But here’s what Drought.gov still says as of Tuesday, January 24, 2023 (latest data is for the week ending January 17, 2023):

Cliff Mass used the rightmost image above for refutation (link above). This next image is what appeared in the NY Times:

it’s a one-month view on the left and a three-year view on the right.

On the other hand, California SPIE (The Normalized precipitation-evaporation index) on a 12 month basisdownloaded on January 21, 23, looks like this:

That suggests it’s still pretty dry in the extreme southeastern corner of the Colorado desert.

What can we do with all of this?

Some of these images have some Common point. But, in the end, they are more different than the same.

Why? I will cover that in Part 2.

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Author’s comments:

I grew up in Los Angeles in the 1950s and early 1960s. During that 20-year period, we experienced year-long droughts that required water-saving rules; we have years of heavy rain, we have atmospheric rivers (called Fast pineapple in those days, coming from Hawaii), we had great floods — filling Los Angeles’ expanded flood control channel (and my local park – intentionally built as a flood control device).

I spend my summers camping and hiking in the arid hills and mountains covered with bush, and exploring the near-endless deserts day and night.

California is a “virtually dry” place – a beautiful place not covered in concrete and the rabbit holes of too many people.

Stay tuned for part 2

Thanks for reading.

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