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Megadrought Alarm – Rise up with that?


By Rud Istvan,

I scanned through Google News this morning (February 14), headlines from the New York Times and NPR caught my eye.

NYT: “How bad is the drought in the West? Worst in 12 centuries, study shows! ”

NPR: “Study shows worst western super-drought in 1200 years!”

Both titles refer to a new feature wall paper in Nature Climate Change (of course). Lead author Park Williams is a UCLA ‘bioclimatologist’. I’m not wasting money on reporting, because NPR reporter Nathan Rott provided full context for free on today’s NPR.org website to write this brief post on the latest ‘research news’.

The NCC paper itself seems to be decent enough. Analysis of tree rings (of roof beams) from Southwestern archeological sites dating back to 800 (e.g. Chaco Canyon) that have been joined with living tree ring cores to form a panorama Wet/Normal/Dry Area SW USA lasts about 1200 years. Conifers grow better annually in wet (wider ring) rather than dry (narrower ring) well established conditions (unlike Mann’s treemometers).

The trees tell the story of five major droughts in the Southwest United States since 800AD. The worst is present; The next worst thing was a 23-year period in the late 1500s. To a reasonable person, this means that these periodic droughts in the West have little to do with climate change. . But that won’t make the article published on NCC.

So, of course, there is a claimed climate change link. Williams told Rott that the current super-drought is a fifth of climate change. NPR subtitle: “Human-caused climate change.” “Researcher Williams says about one-fifth of current super-droughts could be man-made climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions are warming the world, accelerating evaporation and disrupting weather patterns.” How did he come to that conclusion? The trees today show about 20% greater drought severity than they did in the late 1500s. Sure. The difference MUST be purely climate change, not natural variation. The NYT says so. NCC says so. One climatologist said so.

Williams ended up interviewing NPR with; “We can’t let ourselves be fooled by a few wet years into giving up on the progress we’ve made.” To us, he meant California. It is definitely not India and China. And Mauna Loa’s Keeling curve doesn’t show CO2 progress ever. His own regional research shows that normal and wet years will return, but don’t let that fool you.

[Addendum]

I received an email from a JT reader this afternoon that said:
Research on tree-ring drought is wrongly shown by the drowning forests of Lake Ladder.
And give this link to the story and research outlined above.

I believe this is the study that JT was referring to.

[End addendum-cr]



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