{"id":24631,"date":"2011-09-07T15:43:20","date_gmt":"2011-09-07T19:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetsave.com\/?p=24631"},"modified":"2011-09-07T15:43:20","modified_gmt":"2011-09-07T19:43:20","slug":"extreme-wildfires-drought-strike-extreme-global-warming-denying-state-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/articles\/extreme-wildfires-drought-strike-extreme-global-warming-denying-state-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"Extreme Wildfires & Drought Strike Extreme Global Warming Denying State, Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you haven’t heard, Texas has been fighting massive wildfires this week. Yes, the state forced to pray for rain that denies climate science, for the most part (their state climate scientists don’t), is getting hit with tremendous natural disasters. We haven’t covered the Texas wildfires much (so little time, so much to cover<\/em>), so thought I’d share this excellent coverage of the topic by Dr. Joe Romm of Climate Progress<\/a>. Check it out (full repost below the top picture):<\/p>\n

\"texas<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is irony befitting a Shakespearean tragedy. \u00a0Gov. Rick Perry finally got what he called on all\u00a0Texans to pray for<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 some rain\u00a0\u2013 but it was almost entirely dumped elsewhere and the winds of Tropical Storm Lee merely served to stoke the most brutal wildfires anyone had ever seen.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This unprecedented climate impact is, indeed,\u00a0Hell and High Water<\/a>. \u00a0Time<\/em>\u2018s headline is, \u201cTexas Burns as the Rest of the Country Drowns<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0But, of course, they have no mention of climate change whatsoever.<\/p>\n

How bad is it in Texas? \u00a0CBS reported\u00a0this morning<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Since December,\u00a0wildfires have consumed 3.6 million acres of Texas \u2014 an area the size of the state of Connecticut<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there is\u00a0no rainfall in the forecast for the foreseeable future.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Texas Forest Service put out statement saying, \u201cThis is unprecedented fire behavior. No one on the face of this Earth has ever fought fires in these extreme condition<\/strong>s\u201d\u2026.<\/p>\n

Tom Boggus, director of the Texas Forest Service: \u00a0\u201dIt\u2019s historic.\u00a0We\u2019ve never seen fire seasons like this. We\u2019ve never seen drought like this<\/strong>.\u00a0This is \u00a0that we\u2019re living in<\/strong>, and so people know and understand they\u2019ve got to be extremely careful.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So much for the standard denier claim that the weather extremes we\u2019ve been experiencing now are nothing special.<\/p>\n

Mr. Boggus obviously has one of the hardest jobs in the country, particularly working for a governor whose dual adaptation strategy is prayer coupled with\u00a0cutting the\u00a0budget of the Texas Forest Service<\/a>. \u00a0So I hate to be the one to disappoint him \u2014 BUT this is going to be the briefest\u00a0\u201dhistoric time\u201d in history. \u00a0In a few decades, assuming we keep listening to people like his Governor, this will be a pretty average summer for Texas (see\u00a0here<\/a>). \u00a0Heck, next summer could be\u00a0worse<\/a>!<\/p>\n

If only scientists had warned us decades ago it would get hotter and drier with ever worse heat waves, droughts, and wildfires if we kept burning all that Texas Tea\u2026..<\/p>\n

Actually Andrew Freedman of the\u00a0WashPost<\/em>\u2018s Capital Weather Gang has a nice\u00a0run through<\/a>\u00a0of the climate science. \u00a0But first Freedman directs us to yet more jaw-dropping statistics of just how grim things are down in Perry-land, courtesy of state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon on his too-aptly named\u00a0Climate Abyss blog<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The preliminary numbers from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) are in: the Texas average temperature in August was 88.1 F, 2.4 F above the previous warmest August (1952).\u00a0 This also breaks the all-time record for hottest month in Texas history.\u00a0 The records go back to 1895, but the previous record, 87.1 F, was set just last month.\u00a0 Whatever the contribution from urban warming and poor station siting, it\u2019s quite small compared to the temperature extremes we\u2019ve been seeing this year.<\/p>\n

Combined, the three months June-August averaged 86.8 F.\u00a0 This sets the all-time record for hottest summer in the lower 48 states.\u00a0 Oklahoma was running neck and neck, but came in at 86.5 F.\u00a0 Both shattered the previous record, 85.2 F, set by Oklahoma in 1934.\u00a0 Oklahoma can be consoled by the fact that it still owns the record for hottest individual month, 88.9 F in July 2011.<\/p>\n

I call it a Pyric (rather than Pyrrhic) victory because the drought and heat have turned the Lost Pines of Bastrop into their own funeral pyre, the Bastrop fire being the largest of several fires that continue to burn out of control.\u00a0 The drought has produced the necessary fuel conditions, and the combination of T.S. Lee and the first strong cold front of the season provided the strong winds and low humidity needed for rapidly-spreading wildfires.<\/p>\n

The most commonly-used drought index, the Palmer Drought Severity Index, is now at -7.75 according to NCDC<\/em>.\u00a0 This is the second-lowest monthly value in Texas history, exceeded only by the -7.80 calculated for September 1956.\u00a0 This index is most sensitive to drought on a 6-12 month time scale; water supply impacts were generally worse in 1956 because that drought began in 1950.\u00a0\u00a0The present drought is the most severe one-year drought on record for Texas.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By comparison,\u00a0the PDSI<\/strong>\u00a0in the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl spiked briefly to -6, but otherwise rarely exceeded -3 for the decade<\/strong>\u00a0(see\u00a0here<\/a>). \u00a0Yet Texas\u2019s\u00a0shocking PDSI is actually the projected PDSI for much of the U.S. by the 2060s\u00a0(See\u00a0NCAR analysis warns we risk multiple, devastating global droughts even on moderate emissions path<\/a>)!<\/p>\n

No, it\u2019s not too late to prevent that almost unimaginable catastrophe. \u00a0But again, it would require the political system to reject everything Gov. Perry and the Tea Party stand for, and it would require the media to actually inform the public what is going on and how bad it is going to get if the disinformers triumph. \u00a0As if.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Freedman schooling the rest of the media on how to talk about this:<\/p>\n

\n

A hotter drought because of global warming?<\/h3>\n

The drought, extreme heat, and wildfires are intertwined. For example, the dry conditions that help create dangerous fire weather conditions also make it easier for air temperatures to rise into record territory, since most of the sun\u2019s energy can be directed towards heating the air, rather than evaporating soil moisture and raising temperatures.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear exactly what role global warming may be playing in the current Texas drought, but it\u2019s difficult to dismiss it as a contributing factor to the drought\u2019s severity. La Nina, which is a natural source of climate variability, is the primary suspect for reducing precipitation in Texas during the past year. (La Nina was declared \u201cdead\u201d by the end of May this year, but suggestions that La Nina conditions may return this winter aren\u2019t exactly good news for Texas).<\/p>\n

Many climate change studies point to an increased likelihood of droughts in coming years, particularly in the Southwestern U.S. As air and sea temperatures warm, there is an increasing amount of water vapor in the air, which can be wrung out in the form of more intense rainfall events in some areas, but that water vapor is also wrung out of the soil through evapotranspiration, and those regions already at the margin of arid conditions are left high and dry, triggering a self-feeding cycle of drier soils and higher temperatures. In general, with precipitation and climate change, a good rule of thumb is that extremes will become more extreme \u2013 heavy rainfall and flooding will be exacerbated, but so too will drought events. Another way it is often explained, wet regions are likely to become wetter, dry regions drier.<\/p>\n

Indeed, studies have shown that\u00a0some of these trends are already evident<\/a>. Given the extreme heat that has accompanied it, the Texas drought has the characteristics\u00a0 of global warming-influenced drought, even if \u2013 as always \u2013 it is hard to unravel the human and natural factors causing the particular conditions.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that as average temperatures increase due to climate change, drought impacts are likely to get worse, and we may be seeing this play out in Texas and other hard-hit areas. As NOAA researcher\u00a0Marty Hoerling told the media in July<\/a>, drought plus heat \u201cis just going to make a bad situation that much worse,\u201d since higher temperatures dry soils out much more rapidly. \u201cWe haven\u2019t necessarily dealt with drought and heat at the same time in such a persistent way.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually, there are great many studies that show some of these trends are evident \u2014 see here: \u00a0Two seminal Nature papers join growing body of evidence that human emissions fuel extreme weather, flooding that harm humans and the environment<\/a><\/p>\n

And there is a considerable amount of research on how we are already drying out. \u00a0I have been reviewing much of it for an article I was asked to write and will be discussing some of the key articles in the weeks to come.<\/p>\n

The bottom line: \u00a0Hell and High Water is here but since we potentially face 10 times as much warming this century as we saw in the last half-century, we ain\u2019t seen nothing yet.<\/p>\n

Photo Credit:\u00a0\"Attribution\"\"Share<\/a>\u00a0Some rights reserved<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Tim Patterson<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you haven’t heard, Texas has been fighting massive wildfires this week. Yes, the state forced to pray for rain that denies climate science, for the most part (their state climate scientists don’t), is getting hit with tremendous natural disasters. We haven’t covered the Texas wildfires much (so little time, so much to cover), so thought I’d share this excellent coverage of the topic by Dr. Joe Romm of Climate Progress. Check it out (full repost below the top picture):<\/p>\n

Here is irony befitting a Shakespearean tragedy. Gov. Rick Perry finally got what he called on all Texans to pray for \u2014 some rain \u2013 but it was almost entirely dumped elsewhere and the winds of Tropical Storm Lee merely served to stoke the most brutal wildfires anyone had ever seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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Yes, the state forced to pray for rain that denies climate science, for the most part (their state climate scientists don't), is getting hit with tremendous natural disasters. We haven't covered the Texas wildfires much (so little time, so much to cover), so…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24631"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}