HOME
Global Warming and Climate Change - links to pages on this site
Drought in the west, floods in the east, and signs of climate change over the Sahara
The weather has brought one piece of bad news after another this year. It would seem that there are going to be winners and losers, and while there does seem to be some promising conditions developing over the Sahara it seems that the desert might just hop the ocean and settle on America.
According to the most recent reports spreading, worsening exceptional drought has now spread over half of the continental United States, with reports indicating that earlier this year the western part of Canada was experiencing the worst drought since records have been kept, even deeper than that of the dirty thirties. (I took some snap shots of dust storms passing through the city in which I live during the month of May, this year). Meanwhile the Southeastern United States is experiencing the most severe drought since records have been kept (going back to 1732...
Exceptional drought blankets Southeast
Waterways have become isolated puddles, filled with the rotting carcasses of dead fishand lakes have fallen back by hundreds of feet. 40 per cent of reporting stations are reporting water flow at record all time lows. The drought fits into the 'exceptional' catagory, the very worst rating. Last year farmers received rain when it was most needed, but this year nothing has come, and the reports state that crop yields are plunging. Water restrictions are in place, and the drought continues to deepen with each passing month. In the West the severe drought has spread over an area more than double the size it was in May of this year, and has begun thrusting out further onto the Western plains. Meanwhile Democrats and Republicans are battling over drought relief packages, with the Republicans wanting to halve the amount being proposed by Democrats.
The national weather service has reported that drought has spread to 49 per cent of the continental United States.
Drought grips half of country
This still does not equal the coverage of the dirty thirties, when 80 per cent of the country was affected by drought. according to their report, "The past 12 months were the driest August through July on record in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado and Wyoming. They were the second driest in Arizona, Nevada and Delaware ... The Agriculture Department said more than 75 percent of range and pastures were classified as poor to very poor in five western states -- Nebraska, Colorado, California, Wyoming and South Dakota -- in early August; more than 50 percent had that classification in 13 other states." Large sell offs of livestock herds have been taking place, at low prices, and similar conditions persist in Australia, where it was reported that many cattle being auctioned off were 'nothing more than skin and bones.'
Meanwhile, other parts of the planet have the opposite problem...to much rain. China has been experiencing torrential rains and flooding, in the arid desert regions.
China weather patterns out of sorts
The strange weather patterns have been persisting for over six months. Sand storms in the spring were more intense, the winter was warm, and the spring was cold, and now torrential monsoons have fallen on the arid areas, causing flooding. The storms have caused billions in damage. Meanwhile more flooding and typhoons loom over Asia in mid August, 2002.
Torrential flooding is also wide spread over Europe and Russia.
Europe's watery disaster
Germany, Slovakia, Hungary, and other parts of SouthEastern Europe and Russia have been particularly hard hit. Rivers are at up to five times their normal height, and moving like torrents. There are also fears of enviromental disasters as the flood waters threaten such facilities as chemical plants.
The summer has also brought some turbulance to the weather over the Sahara, which, if trends continue as they have been, will turn out to be one of the 'winners' in the changing climatic patterns. Earlier this spring rains brought vegetation to the desert briefly, before dryness and low humidity set in for a couple of months. Starting around the end of July and then throughout August unseasonable moisture came to the desert (unseasonable since the rain that does come to the desert comes in the winter, with the summer and fall being the dry season). As well while the humidity over the desert is usually brutally low (as one would expect, this being the Sahara, after all) the humidity has been experiencing oscillations, with persistent levels of extremely high humidity developing over the desert during the summer, with only small regions of moderately low humidity sitting like isolated islands. This pattern is extremely peculiar, since I have monitored the desert for years myself, waiting for conditions such as what I have been seeing this year, and the desert is always brutally dessicated, and this persistently developing high humidity is definately unusual.
The graphic shows some examples these pockets of oscillating moderate humidity (in orange) surrounded by high humidity on the desert (in blue) - severely low humidity would appear as bright red, as would be more typical for that desert in the past. The image at the top is an infrared satellite photo which shows the cloud cover over the desert for August 18th. The most recent vegetation maps show pockets of green developing again in reponse to the pattern of returning rains (although not yet as widespread as what appeared briefly this spring). The graphic at the bottom is the most recent drought impact graphic, which shows the half of the country impacted by drought in bright red, with drought warning areas in yellow and brown.
A video which shows some of the recent turbulance over the Sahara in August/September 2002...Real Media 440 kb ... You can right click the link if you wish and choose 'save link as', or 'save target as' (depending on your browser) if you wish to download the file to your computer, or simply left click as usual to launch the Real Player plug in from your browser...
I have been watching all this develop with a great deal of interest, and it seems that there will be winners and losers as weather patterns shift, with, it would seem, continental North America, and in particular the United States seeming on the way to becoming 'The United States of the Sahara' while the Sahara shows all kinds of interesting promise of becoming a garden once again, as it was (covered with swamps, rivers, lakes, and savannah only six thousand years ago).
Global Warming and Climate Change - links to pages on this site
Other drought related links...
Drought watch
Mountain drought - a page from last summer
The summer news index page contains numerous links to recent drought stories...
Sahara rain report
Eden Watch index 2002
HOME