Eastern Colorado In Grips Of Severe Drought

If you haven’t heard or read by now, I’m sorry to be the first to let you know: as of early 2011, eastern Colorado is experiencing a severe drought.  The mountains and the western slope are doing just fine, thanks to a strong La Nina that has brought above-average precipitation to western Colorado all winter.  The eastern plains, however, have received scant precipitation dating back to just after July 4th, 2010.  the precipitation that has fallen in the Denver metro area, for example, since that time has been largely confined to singular events followed by weeks of no precipitation.  Coyote Gulch has a piece on what this means for the Arkansas Valley farmers.

For the record, as dry as it has been over eastern Colorado for the past 9+ months, Oklahoma and Texas are doing relatively worse.  Extreme drought conditions exist over a large part of southern Oklahoma and most of Texas.  A portion of Texas near Houston is experiencing Exceptional drought conditions.  The same La Nina that has brought near-record snowpack to the Sierra Nevadas and saturated the Pacific Northwest has left the southern U.S. high and dry.  That’s not expected to change in the next 3 months as the La Nina slowly weakens and the tropical Pacific returns to neutral conditions.

In the long term, these kinds of events are only going to become more likely and more severe, regardless of the specific strength of a particular La Nina or other short-term climate oscillation.  I’m not saying this drought will continue for years to come, but as a result of our climate forcing, the drought dice are being loaded more and more.  We will learn what it’s like to hit a 13 or 14 on 2 six-sided die that we’re painting with extra numbers this century.  Mankind has never had to deal with the kind of climate extremes that will occur.

The effects of this drought have yet to really be felt. Once they do, we should all ask ourselves how prepared we are to face much more severe droughts in the future.

Cross-posted at SquareState.

Climate Change: Core Climate Solutions, Greenland Ice Loss, CO Forest Health

Climate Progress has a Core Climate Solution Primer.  Recommended reading.

The rate at which Greenland’s ice sheets are losing mass has dramatically increased compared to rates in the 20th century, according to a new Geophysical Research Letters article.  From the abstract:

We find that the ice sheet was losing 110 ± 70 Gt/yr in the 1960s, 30 ± 50 Gt/yr or near balance in the 1970s–1980s, and 97 ± 47 Gt/yr in 1996 increasing rapidly to 267 ± 38 Gt/yr in 2007.

The 2007 number is just astounding.  Quantifying it is important for other research.

Gov. Bill Ritter has sent a letter to the Chief of the U.S. Forest Service requesting a larger portion of an upcoming federal allotment of forest health funding.  Citing Colorado’s ongoing drought and recent record fire years coupled with an expected explosion of human-forest interfaces in the next 20 years, Ritter made the argument that the current average of $6 million per year in funding wasn’t sufficient.  From his letter:

Regional Forester Rick Cables estimated the costs of addressing these concerns on national forests to be nearly $40 million dollars in fiscal year 2009 alone – a calculation that does not include any support to address equally critical needs on state and private lands.

More below.