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Letter Re: Unexpected Climate Change
Dear Jim and Family,
The movie The Day After Tomorrow was on FX (cable TV channel)
tonight. The first hour is entertaining weather disasters and fun science
building
up,
the second hour was a travesty which insulted intelligent people and
scientists everywhere. But it was pretty, and it's just a movie. It's
okay for
it to be half cr*p as long as its entertaining.
The reality of climate change is much more interesting, and considerably
slower paced. This week I found a web site with a drought map which
is updated weekly. US
Drought Monitor. It is pretty darned interesting.
Another little reality is the West Coast (California, Oregon, Washington)
has its entire climate based on the Longshore Drift, which is powered
by the North Wind from Alaska. This wind causes upwelling of nutrient
rich cold water along the coastline to several hundred miles out on
the continental shelf. This water provides food for plankton, fish,
and birds. It also drops summer temperatures inland and reduces evaporation
along the coastline. Without this cool water current, there's no food
for the fish, no fish to catch, no salmon, and the weather starts to
resemble that of Baja Mexico. That sounds pretty good until you realize
that Baja has pretty dead water with not much in it. The ocean's equivalent
of a desert: oxygen poor, toxic thanks to algae blooms, and not healthy
for people either. This is happening now, and has been a problem for
the last 4 years, which (perhaps) coincidentally corresponds with years
of drought. The North Wind has started late each summer, usually after
high numbers of birds have died. Most of the Salmon are gone, for various
reasons but the oxygen problem is the main culprit. You'd think this
would be limited to California, since its a state which clearly offends
God, but Oregon is suffering too and there's a lot of
Christians up there. Its Eugene that gives the state a bad rep.
This isn't the best part. With warmer temperatures, the waters can
support unusual weather for the area: hurricanes. I say unusual because
they are such in the last few thousand years, however they're Not unusual
in the geologic record. As a geology student, I got to see the sedimentation
of hurricanes, event (storm) by event (storm) in coastal sandstones
called "Turbidite Sequences". Turns out that California (and
Oregon) used to get some pretty severe weather we normally associate
with Southern Mexico, Florida, and the Gulf Coast. I'm talking category
4-5 hurricanes every year. Yes that seems strange, but the winds control
the currents and the currents & winds control the weather. ANd
the weather controls the food supply, which controls population movements
and can turn a remote retreat location into a deathtrap.
Or something really weird can happen. Like summer rains and monsoons
can start flowing into California, along with those hurricanes. See,
normal California and Southwestern weather is brief winter rains followed
by months of spring, summer, and fall drought. In the old days, Northern
California got rain from October to May, and that was perfectly normal
weather. Nowadays is January to February, and the rainy season is punctuated
by long drying periods so the aquifers don't fill, the streams empty,
and it just resembles a desert. It sucks, but that's how it is. This
is a transitional period. Perhaps things will change back next year,
but perhaps they won't.
That leads to the weird thing. If we get summer monsoons, it changes
the whole climate in the Southwest. It means lightning in a state that
rarely sees any in the lowlands. It means tornados and hail. It means
thunderstorms and flash floods. It means living pasture in currently
dry regions, which is a real boon to ranching and dairy, but death
to the orchards. It means heavy rain in the lower reaches of the Sierras
and summer snowstorms. It also means rain reaching Nevada and the desert
regions of California and Arizona (and Utah), with storms coming from
the Southwest, via Hawaii, what we call the "Pineapple Express".
Imagine that happening a couple times a week all summer long in places
where it never used to rain, so the SW, starts to get like the SE.
Humid, wet, water soaking into the aquifers, rivers running, plants
changing. It also means that a lot of dry lakes fill, starting at salt
marshes and swamps but eventually able to host fish, deer, elk, mountain
sheep, migrating birds, antelope, willows, alders, cottonwoods. Land
in Nevada would become not only habitable but valuable. With the change
in direction of the weather, new banana-belts would also develop, as
they're based on direction of rainfall and spots downwind from mountain
ranges experience warming during storms on the far side. That's more
long-term.
In the short term, you'll see a few storms, and a few hurricanes creeping
north up Baja, a long way from Los Angeles, but as the ocean temps
rise on the California and Oregon coastline, the further north the
storms can go before breaking up. And like I said, there's evidence
in the geologic record of hurricanes striking the coast North of San
Francisco. It could be some time before that happens, or it could happen
in a dozen years, then more quiet for another dozen. Lots of factors
are involved making precise prediction foolhardy. In the meantime,
keep your eyes peeled for summer rain in California. It could be a
harbinger of a serious change in climate, perhaps for the better. Best,
- InyoKern
