Great Drought of 2012 continuing into 2013
Rain and snow from the massive winter storm that swept across the nation over the past week put only a slight dent in the Great Drought of 2012, according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor report. The area of Iowa in extreme or exceptional drought fell 9 percentage points to 32 percent, thanks to widespread precipitation amounts of 0.5" - 1.5". However, the area of the contiguous U.S. covered by moderate or greater drought remained virtually unchanged from the previous week, at 61.8%. According to NOAA's monthly State of the Drought report, the 61.8% of the U.S. covered by drought this week was also what we had during July, making the 2012 drought the greatest U.S. drought since the Dust Bowl year of 1939. (During December of 1939, 62.1% of the U.S. was in drought; the only year with more of the U.S. in drought was 1934.) The Great Drought of 2012 is about to become the Great Drought of 2012 - 2013, judging by the latest 15-day precipitation forecast from the GFS model. There is a much below-average chance of precipitation across the large majority of the drought region through the second week of January, and these dry conditions will potentially cause serious trouble for barge traffic on the Mississippi River by the second week of January. The river level at St. Louis is currently -3.6', which is the 9th lowest level of the past 100 years. The latest NOAA river level forecast calls for the river to fall below -5' by January 4. This would be one of the five lowest water levels on record for St. Louis. At this water level, the river's depth will fall to 9' at Thebes, Illinois, which is the threshold for closing the river to barge traffic. The Army Corps of Engineers is working to dredge the river to allow barge traffic to continue if the river falls below this level, but it is uncertain if this will be enough to make a difference, unless we get some significant January precipitation in the Upper Mississippi watershed. The river is predicted to set a new all-time low by January 13 (Figure 4.)
Figure 1. The December 25, 2012 U.S. Drought Monitor showed that approximately 62% of the contiguous U.S. was in moderate or greater drought.
Figure 2. Predicted 7-day precipitation for the period ending on Friday, January 4. Very few regions of the main U.S. drought area are predicted to receive as much as 0.5" of precipitation (dark green color.) Image credit: NOAA.
Long-term drought outlook
NOAA's December 20 Seasonal Drought Outlook called for drought to persist over at least 80% of the U.S. drought area through the end of March. I don't see any signs of a shift in the fundamental large-scale atmospheric flow patterns during the past few weeks, or in the model forecasts for the coming weeks, and it is good bet that drought will be a huge concern as we enter spring. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center predicts an increased chance of drier than average conditions over southwestern portions of the drought region during the coming three months. In general, droughts are more likely in the Central U.S. when warmer than average ocean temperatures prevail in the tropical Atlantic, with cooler than average ocean temperatures in the tropical Eastern Pacific (La Niña-like conditions.) This is the current situation, though the equatorial tropical Pacific is only slightly cooler than average (0.2°C below average as of December 24). Most of the Midwest needs 3 - 9" of precipitation to pull out of drought.
Figure 3. Amount of precipitation needed to bust drought conditions over the U.S., according to NOAA's Climate Prediction Center. Eastern Oklahoma and Western Arkansas need the most rain, 9 - 15".
Figure 4. The latest NOAA river level forecast calls for the Mississippi River to fall below -5' at St. Louis by January 4. At this level, the river may close to barge traffic due to low water. By January 13, the river is expected to fall to its lowest level on record, -6.2'. The record was set in January 1940, after the great Dust Bowl droughts of the 1930s.
Figure 5. This Nov. 28, 2012 photo provided by The United States Coast Guard shows a WWII minesweeper on the Mississippi River near St. Louis, Missouri. The minesweeper, once moored along the Mississippi River as a museum at St. Louis before it was torn away by floodwaters in 1993, is normally completely under water. However, it has become visible--rusted but intact--due to near-record low river levels on the Mississippi. (AP Photo/United States Coast Guard, Colby Buchanan)
Links:
My post on Lessons from 2012: Droughts, not Hurricanes, are the Greater Danger discussed how drought is our greatest threat from climate change.
Ricky Rood blogs about the Dust Bowl
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Snowfall Amounts
You sure do talk about them a lot and are up to date about them for not liking the channel...
Tropical Cyclone Advisory #7
DEPRESSION TROPICALE 05-20122013
16:00 PM RET December 31 2012
=======================================
At 12:00 PM UTC, Tropical Depression (997 hPa) located at 11.8S 57.8E has 10 minute sustained winds of 30 knots. The depression is reported as moving west southwest at 6 knots.
Near Gale Force Winds
=====================
110 NM radius from the center, extending up to 190 NM in the northwestern quadrant with locally gale force winds up to 100 NM from the center, up to 220 NM in the southern semi-circle
Dvorak Intensity: T2.0/2.0/S0.0/24 HRS
Forecast and Intensity
=======================
12 HRS: 12.4S 57.1E - 35 knots (Tempête Tropicale Modérée)
24 HRS: 13.5S 56.4E - 40 knots (Tempête Tropicale Modérée)
48 HRS: 18.1S 54.7E - 55 knots (Forte Tempête Tropicale)
72 HRS: 23.2S 54.5E - 70 knots (Cyclone Tropical)
Additional Information
======================
Microwave imagery TRMM at 0701z depicts few evolution of the deep convection organization during the past 6 hours, with offset northwest of the low level circulation center.
Structure and intensity of the system are almost stable within the past 6 hours (wind field structure similar to a monsoon depression).
The system should resume a general southwestwards track for the next 24 hours on the northern edge of a low to mid troposphere ridge. Beyond, a mid level ridge is expected to build east of the system with a northerly steering flow. Consequently, the system should track southwards. On this track, the system is expected to pass close or over the Mascareignes archipelago Thursday before evacuation towards the mid-lat Saturday January 5th. Last available numerical weather prediction models forecast a faster movement on and after 24 hours, so the closest point of approach of Réunion island is forecast about 6 hours sooner than the previous issue.
Intensity forecast remains in good agreement with the previous issue. Indeed, lower level environmental conditions are favorable (very good lower levels convergence and favorable sea surface temperatures). The upper levels vertical wind shear may continue to fluctuate during the next 36 hours. Consequently, the deepening of this large size system should be laborious during the next 36 hours. Beyond, system should benefit of good conditions to intensify more sharply during 24 hours. During night from Thursday to Friday, system should undergo cooler sea surface temperature.
On and after Friday, northwesterly upper level vertical wind shear should progressively strengthen aloft. Extratropical transition is expected to begin between Thursday and Friday.
Given all the above, unhabitants of Agalega, Réunion, and Mauritius should monitor the progress of this system. It is important not to focus on the exact forecast position. According to numerical weather prediction models, the system is likely to stay larger than the average and associated hazards could affect widespread areas. Consequently, meteorological conditions are expected to deteriorate well before the center pass close to coastal areas.
July 2012: Hottest Month Ever
According to the latest statistics from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, the average temperature for the contiguous United States during July was 77.6°F, which is 3.3°F above the 20th-century average...
Program Overview
The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) coordinates and integrates federal research on changes in the global environment and their implications for society. The USGCRP began as a presidential initiative in 1989 and was mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-606), which called for "a comprehensive and integrated United States research program which will assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change."
USGCRP's Vision and Mission:
Our Vision:
A nation, globally engaged and guided by science, meeting the challenges of climate and global change
Our Mission:
To build a knowledge base that informs human responses to climate and global change through coordinated and integrated federal programs of research, education, communication, and decision support
Thirteen departments and agencies participate in the USGCRP, which was known as the U.S. Climate Change Science Program from 2002 through 2008. The program is steered by the Subcommittee on Global Change Research under the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, overseen by the Executive Office of the President, and facilitated by the National Coordination Office.
During the past two decades, the United States, through the USGCRP, has made the world's largest scientific investment in the areas of climate change and global change research. Since its inception, the USGCRP has supported research and observational activities in collaboration with several other national and international science programs.
These activities led to major advances in several key areas including but not limited to:
Observing and understanding short- and long-term changes in climate, the ozone layer, and land cover;
Identifying the impacts of these changes on ecosystems and society;
Estimating future changes in the physical environment, and vulnerabilities and risks associated with those changes; and
Providing scientific information to enable effective decision making to address the threats and opportunities posed by climate and global change.
These advances have been documented in numerous assessments commissioned by the program and have played prominent roles in international assessments such as those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Program results and plans are documented in the program's annual report, Our Changing Planet.
CMIP5 - Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 - Overview
At a September 2008 meeting involving 20 climate modeling groups from around the world, the WCRP's Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM), with input from the IGBP AIMES project, agreed to promote a new set of coordinated climate model experiments. These experiments comprise the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). CMIP5 will notably provide a multi-model context for 1) assessing the mechanisms responsible for model differences in poorly understood feedbacks associated with the carbon cycle and with clouds, 2) examining climate “predictability” and exploring the ability of models to predict climate on decadal time scales, and, more generally, 3) determining why similarly forced models produce a range of responses.
It is expected that some of the scientific questions that arose during preparation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) will through CMIP5 be addressed in time for evaluation in the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5, scheduled for publication in late 2013). The IPCC/CMIP5 schedule (pdf ) is now available and the three key dates are as follows:
Februrary 2011: First model output is expected to be available for analysis,
July 31, 2012: By this date papers must be submitted for publication to be eligible for assesment by WG1,
March 15, 2013: By this date papers cited by WG1 must be published or accepted.
The IPCC’s AR5 is scheduled to be published in September 2013. Future timeline information can be found on IPCC WG1 website.
CMIP5 is meant to provide a framework for coordinated climate change experiments for the next five years and thus includes simulations for assessment in the AR5 as well as others that extend beyond the AR5. CMIP5 is not, however, meant to be comprehensive; it cannot possibly include all the different model intercomparison activities that might be of value, and it is expected that various groups and interested parties will develop additional experiments that might build on and augment the experiments described here.
CMIP5 promotes a standard set of model simulations in order to:
evaluate how realistic the models are in simulating the recent past,
provide projections of future climate change on two time scales, near term (out to about 2035) and long term (out to 2100 and beyond), and
understand some of the factors responsible for differences in model projections, including quantifying some key feedbacks such as those involving clouds and the carbon cycle
There has to be an active winter storm warning and forecast of 6+ inches of snowfall over a large area of population to be named.
I only see 1 winter storm warning on the NWS warning map within the lower 48 states.
Portlight wunderblog
www.portlight.org
Operation Restore, our project to aid people with disabilities who were affected by Superstorm Sandy, has begun in New York and New Jersey. Because the damage wrought is so great, the process of clean-up and remediation has been slow, but needs of the community are coming to light every day. We will be replacing durable medical equipment, but in partnership with our friends at BonaResponds, we'll also be helping to muck-out basements and crawlspaces, gut flooded homes, and begin the restoration process.
As we reach out to the local disability community, we've encountered families with children with mobility issues, who've lost everything from chairs and scooters, to ramps and lifts. There are elderly couples whose lifelong homes were destroyed; a mother caring for her grown daughter, whose accessible apartment on the ground level of her mother's home was taken out by floodwaters; and so many more.
As is often the case, it has taken some time for the scope of these needs to come into focus, and they are far greater than we'd even imagined. We will continue to address as many of them as we can in the coming weeks, with more volunteers on the ground as needed. We are building a network within the community and coming together to restore and rebuild. As always, we thank you for your continued support!
Riverside Municipal CA
Fair
45°F
7°C
Humidity 43%
Wind Speed NE 6 MPH
Barometer 30.18 in (1021.4 mb)
Dewpoint 24°F (-4°C)
Visibility 10.00 mi
Last Update on 31 Dec 7:53 am PST
My low this morning was 39.8 and that was the only time mine had dipped into the thirties all Month.
Belief has nothing to do with scientific results. Or do you have some fundamentally new set of physical theories to contradict 150 years of well tested, well established science? If you do, you really need to publish a few papers and win the Nobel.
Numerous to widespread showers are expected over the area beginning early New Years Day and could impact the region through Thursday as a cold front and area of low pressure slowly move through the Lower Mississippi Valley region. Locally heavy rainfall will be possible with rainfall amounts averaging 1 to 3 inches during the entire period. The heaviest rain will likely occur New Years Day...Tuesday. Small craft advisory conditions are expected to develop over the coastal waters from late Tuesday night through Friday in the wake of the cold front.
Invest snowstorm91US
It's funny that you used the word "belive" since AGW is back by more than a hundred years of empirical scientific evidence.
Maybe you need a mirror to find what you're looking for.
Synopsis For High Island To The Matagorda Ship Channel Out 60
Nautical Miles Including Galveston And Matagorda Bays
Synopsis For High Island To Matagorda Ship Channel Out 60 Nm
Have issued a sca for waters 20-60 miles offshore as winds are currently running in the 20-25 knot range with seas forecast to reach 7 feet this afternoon. Raised caution flags for the bays as winds today should run in the 15-20 knot range. Decided to maintain the spec for coastal waters 0 to 20 nm off shore as winds and seas should remain just under advisory criteria. Winds should remain steady through tonight when a cold front pushes into the area. The front should push off the coast Tuesday morning allowing for strong northerly winds and rough seas. Showers and thunderstorms will be likely along the front. Advisories will likely be needed for conditions behind the front. Prolonged advisory/caution conditions are expected for the next few days.
Forecast as of 9:18 am CST on December 31, 2012
Synopsis For Lower Atchafalaya To High Island Tx Out 60
Nautical Miles
Synopsis For Lower Atchafalaya To High Island Tx Out 60 Nm
A warm front will move north across the coastal waters this morning and into southern Louisiana. A frontal wave will form over deep south Texas along the front and will move rapidly across the area on Tuesday. The trailing cold front will bring strong northerly winds to the coastal waters by late Tuesday.
*Note sca = small craft advisory
I hear you Ark..
I hope you get a good soaking day-long rain.. :)
Was zero when I woke up (in Helena MT) this morning...about 10 now
LOL... always a laudable activity...
How well do the number of watches correspond to the number of tornados / tornado outbreaks?
BTW, I've been watching a bit more TWC the last few days while I've been in Florida, and I have to admit they look a little better than they did in July. e.g. I note the "storm stories" type evening programming gets interrupted for "on the 8s" type live updates, which are a much better compromise that the stuff they used to do... I haven't really looked at the morning shows, though.
_________________________
HAPPY NEW YEAR PHILIPPINES, CHINA, JAPAN, HONG KONG, ALL AUSTRALIA, VIETNAM, INDONESIA, TAIWAN, SINGAPORE, KOREAS, MALAYSIA.!!!!.
Next one up... India
click imager for larger view
next update in about an hour...sorry i was out doing something before
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