Drought and heat combine to expand fire size and extend the burning season. In Arizona, in the 20th Century, lightning ignited the largest fires in early summer when low humidity and high temperature had prepped the vegetation combustion. Human-caused fires during the more-humid conditions of the rest of the year were smaller. However, as things have warmed up and the drought has intensified, large human-caused fires are beginning to flare up in other seasons. The devastating result is that the fire recurrence interval is becoming too short for regeneration by most native perennial plants. Much of the Sonoran Desert is becoming an annual weedland (http://garryrogers.com/2014/01/14/desert-fire/).
Tag Archives: Drought
Population News: El Niño
Here’s another of Joe Bish’s Daily Emails (click and subscribe).
El Niño Is Fueling One of the Scariest Droughts In Recent History
By Joe Bish, Issue Advocacy Director for the Population Media Center
“Perhaps the best way to introduce today’s content is to quote from journalist Maddie Stone, writing for Gizmodo: “Imagine if crop yields across the United States dropped more than 50 percent in a single year. It’s difficult to fathom just how catastrophic this would be-but that’s exactly what’s happening in Ethiopia right now, thanks to a deadly, El Niño-fueled drought.”“As you will see as you scan the headlines, . . .”
- Uganda’s Karamoja Faces Drought Emergency See: http://allafrica.com/stories/201601200825.html
- World Vision, WFP feed starving Malawians See: http://www.nyasatimes.com/2016/02/05/world-vision-wfp-feed-starving-malawians/
- Namibia Needs 120 000 Tonnes of Maize Imports See: http://allafrica.com/stories/201602020926.html
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Zimbabwe cops brunt of El Niño and declares state of disaster See: http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/zimbabwe-cops-brunt-of-el-nio-and-declares-state-of-disaster/news-story/176847ae866a063d4558d0d31db28aaa
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5,000 North Korean children starving amid drought See: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2016/01/26/25000-North-Korean-children-starving-amid-drought/4881453818603/
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El Niño-linked drought kills crops and people in PNG See: http://www.irinnews.org/report/102394/el-ni%C3%B1o-linked-drought-kills-crops-and-people-in-png
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139 children die in one month in drought-hit Pakistan district See: http://www.irinnews.org/report/102409/139-children-die-in-one-month-in-drought-hit-pakistan-district
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Somalia drought leaves 50,000 children ‘facing death’ See: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-35522643
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Strong El Niño Causes Ethiopia’s Worst Drought Crisis in Decades; Millions in Need of Food See: https://weather.com/news/news/ethiopia-el-nino-drought-hunger-crisis
Is the Usual El Nino Pacific Storm Track Being Pulled North by Arctic Warming?
Will El Niño soften the mid-latitude droughts?
GR: Scribbler is suggesting that weakening of the polar high-pressure air mass is drawing the jet stream and El Niño enriched storms farther north away from the U. S. Southwest. Thus, the three-month forecast in the map below, based on past El Niño activity, may be inaccurate.
The 2014 Mule Deer Fawn Twins Sampling Fallen Seeds From the Bird Feeder.
Three years ago, deer began visiting Coldwater Farm for the first time in 20 years. This might be related to drying springs in the uplands brought on by drought and the water-table-lowering wells of the homes in the foothills. A basalt dyke forces the normally belowground flow of the Agua Fria River above ground as it crosses the farm. Besides continuous year-round flow, there are several spring-fed ponds. For the past few years, homeowners have deepened their wells, and the water level in the ponds has dropped by about 10%. Last year, some precipitation softened the drought, and upland springs are flowing again. Nevertheless, the deer have remained and have increased.
Scribbler and others believe that precipitation events in February should tell us if this El Niño will break the Southwest drought, or a poleward shift of the storms will leave it intact.
Polar Amplification vs a Godzilla El Nino — Is the Pacific Storm Track Being Shoved North by Arctic Warming?
From robertscribbler.com
“It’s an El Niño year. One of the top three strongest El Ninos on record. The strongest by some NOAA measures. And we are certainly feeling its effects all over the world. From severe droughts in Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America, to Flooding in the Central and Eastern US, Southern Brazil, and India, these impacts, this year and last, have been extreme and wide-ranging. During recent days, Peru and Chile saw enormous ocean waves and high tides swamping coastlines. Record flooding and wave height events for some regions. All impacts related to both this powerful El Niño and the overall influence of human-forced warming by more than 1 C above 1880s temperatures on the whole of the hydrological cycle.
“Amped up by a global warming related 7 percent increase in atmospheric water vapor (and a related increase in evaporation and precipitation over the Earth’s surface), many of these El Niño related impacts have followed a roughly expected pattern (you can learn more about typical El Niño patterns and links to climate change related forcings in this excellent video by Dr Kevin Trenberth here). However, so far, some of the predicted kinds of events you’d typically see during a strong El Niño have not yet emerged. A circumstance that may also be related to the ongoing human-forced warming of the globe.”
The Human Hothouse Turns Bolivia’s Second Largest Lake into a Withered Wasteland
“Lake Poopo in Bolivia has dried up. And Climate Change has been named as the top cause of the disaster.
“After decades of drought and depressed rainfall related to a human-forced warming of the globe, the once-massive lake is now gone. Once measuring 90 by 32 kilometers and covering an area of over 1,000 square kilometers this second largest lake in all of Bolivia has turned into a dried out disaster zone. Cracked, baked earth, overturned and abandoned boats, and the desiccated remains of lake life are all that are left as sign to the fact that a giant lake once existed. The flamingos, fish and other wildlife that relied on the lake are now dead or long gone. Yet more lonely casualties of a climate changed radically by an incessant burning of fossil fuels.
(Human-forced climate change is implicated in Bolivia’s loss of Lake Poopo. Video source: TeleSUR English.)
Rainy Season Undone
About a decade ago, the rainy season in this region of the Altiplano Mountains began to dry up. Rainfall became less regular and the great Lake Poopo — important to locals for its supply of fish and wildlife — began to fade away. By 2015, record global temperatures and El Nino conditions had again pushed the rainy season back. By January of 2016, one month into the typical rainy season, no rains had yet fallen and the great lake had dried up completely. From: robertscribbler.com
GR: With the ongoing drought, there will be more of these events. In addition to the harm to wildlife, the peace and security of human groups is going to decline.
Brazil’s Great Amazon Rainforest Burns as Parched Megacities Fall Under Existential Threat
“One need only look at today’s satellite image of Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest to notice something’s terribly wrong. A vast 1,000 mile swath of what should be some of the wettest lands on the globe running south of the world’s largest river is covered by a dense pall of smoke. Scores of plumes boil up out of the burning and sweltering forest. Pumping dark clouds into the sky, the fires’ tell-tale streaks out over a drought-parched Brazil, across the Atlantic, and over to Africa where the plume is again thickened by yet more wildfires.” From: robertscribbler.com
GR: AFTER THE FIRES: Lightning-caused or human-caused forest fires destroy natural ecosystems when these occur:
- Soil-damaging land use (farming, grazing, recreation) begins immediately after the fire
- New fires occur before the original vegetation has time to recover
- Invasive plants are introduced
- OR, climate has changed to a regime more suited to a different vegetation (grassland or shrubland)
Any of these might lead to more or less permanent decline in biodiversity, productivity, and stability. Combinations of two or more are highly likely to cause permanent decline. (#desertification, #fire, #vegetation-change, and see: http://garryrogers.com/?s=Fire&submit=Search).
See on Scoop.it – GarryRogers Biosphere News
Overgrazing is a major cause of the horror in Syria
“In 1958, the vast semi-arid to arid Syrian steppe was made into a free access (unrestricted) commons by the Syrian national government. This overturned the sustainable type of grazing practiced by the Bedouins for centuries. The tribes and clans of the steppe had developed systems of limiting exploitation of the steppe beyond the grazing that would be sustainable. They even had large rest and restoration areas set by tribal custom and decision.
“Turning the whole thing into a commons led exactly to what we should expect, “the tragedy of the commons.” After almost 50 years of this degradation came the 2006–10 drought. Then came the collapse of the economy and great destabilization of society in the rural interior. The rebellion against the Syrian government had its origins there” From: www.thewildlifenews.com
GR: Grazing mismanagement of Earth’s arid lands has eroded the soil, introduced invasive weeds, reduced productivity, and reduced biodiversity in a process known as desertification. Add climate change droughts and floods exacerbated by climate change, and it is no surprise that people are unhappy.
Nature News Digests
#ClimateChange in California Passes a Tipping Point
“Thresholds matter when it comes to climate change. A small increase in temperature can have a huge impact on natural systems and human infrastructure designed to cope with current weather patterns and extremes. Only a few inches of extra rain can top a levee protecting against flood. Only a degree of warming can be the difference between ice-up and navigable water, between snow pack and bare ground.”
“Climate change has intensified the California drought by fueling record-breaking temperatures that evaporate critically important snowpack, convert snowfall into rain, and dry out soils. This last winter in California was the warmest in 119 years of record keeping, smashing the prior record by an unprecedented margin. Weather records tend to be broken when a temporary trend driven by natural variability runs in the same direction as the long-term trend driven by climate change, in this case towards warmer temperatures. Drought in California has increased significantly over the past 100 years due to rising temperatures. A recent paleoclimate study found that the current drought stands out as the worst to hit the state in 1,200 years largely due the remarkable, record-high temperatures.” www.huffingtonpost.com
GR: Storms and floods are in the forecast; but the drought will continue.
Record-Breaking Wildfires, Greenland Melting and Earth’s Hottest Month Ever
Humans have some advantages over other animal species, but like the animals, we can’t control our urge to reproduce and our desire for the security of material wealth. Sentient but not sapient, sensitive but not wise, our advantages have let us to eliminate competition, disease, and danger. Thus, nothing can stop our booming population and our world-destroying “environmental footprint.” (ACD = anthropogenic climate disruption)