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Page added on September 14, 2015

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Californian water source at 500-year low

Californian water source at 500-year low thumbnail

Snow cover in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, a water lifeline for California’s cities and agriculture, has hit its lowest level in 500 years, a study said Monday.

Measured on April 1, the natural, frozen reservoir was barely five percent of the 1950-2000 average, threatening tens of millions of Californians and the state’s $50-billion (44-billion-euro) agriculture sector with chronic water shortages, its authors warned.

And things were set to get worse, they wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change.

“We should be prepared for this type of snow drought to occur much more frequently because of rising temperatures,” lead author Valerie Trouet, a professor at the University of Arizona, said in a statement.

“Anthropogenic” –- or manmade –- global warming “is making the drought more severe,” she added.

The “snowpack” of Sierra Nevada, central California’s 650-kilometre (400-mile) spine, provides more than 60 percent of the state’s distributed water supply, including all or part of the drinking water for 23 million people.

 

Alpine peaks of the Sierra Nevada rise in the distance …

Alpine peaks of the Sierra Nevada rise in the distance on May 9, 2008 near Lone Pine, California (AF …

Greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area are among the zones affected.

On April 1 -– when the snowpack is generally at its maximum -– California Governor Jerry Brown declared the state’s first-ever mandatory water restrictions. He made the announcement while standing on dry ground that a few years ago would have been covered by a man-high snow blanket.

Extremely low winter rainfall combined with record high temperatures during the first three months of 2015 are to blame, said the study.

Scientists had already established that this year’s snowpack was the smallest since annual measurements began in the 1930s, but the new research goes even further back in time.

– Tree rings –

The team measured the rings of some 1,500 ancient blue oaks in the Central Valley — which runs parallel with the Sierra Nevada –- for a record of annual rainfall in winter, when California receives 80 percent of its precipitation.

Given that the same storms which water the oaks also dump snow on the mountains, tree-ring width is a good proxy for what the snowpack would have been in any given year.

The team then compared their tree-ring data with a reconstruction of winter temperatures for the period 1500-1980, to create a year-by-year snowpack profile.

“This is not just unprecedented over 80 years –- it’s unprecedented over 500 years,” Trouet said of the findings.

California is in the grips of a four-year drought, and ravaged by wildfires that have destroyed more than 100,000 acres (40,470 hectares), hundreds of homes and businesses, authorities say.

According to the US Geological Survey, more than 120 of the state’s reservoirs are less than a fifth full, and 190 under half.

This also threatens California’s hydroelectric power sector — a key source of renewable energy.

Scientists warn that climate change will likely boost the frequency and intensity of droughts.

Yahoo



21 Comments on "Californian water source at 500-year low"

  1. Pennsyguy on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 7:28 pm 

    I’m sure that the rest of the U.S. will welcome refugees from the Golden State with understanding and compassion. Or maybe not.

  2. Davy on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 7:42 pm 

    Penny, I am sure the ones with money will be welcomed. Isn’t that how it works today.

  3. Hello on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 8:01 pm 

    Unfortunately the civilized world is overly welcome for any kind of 3rd worlders. Even those from California.

  4. Makati1 on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 8:30 pm 

    Hello, I have ‘passed thru’ that part of the country on two occasions. Both in the last 5 years. Some beautiful scenery, now dying, and not much else to redeem it. The movie “2012” did it justice, I think.

    As for the article: Mother Nature balances with her laws. Super high temperatures = Super low water levels. Death Valley isn’t one of the driest places on Earth by accident.

  5. Plantagenet on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 8:50 pm 

    Global Warming kills.

  6. zoidberg on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 9:01 pm 

    At the very least local drying does. A little presumptuous to call it global warming. And yes historically it is very dry even without people burning fossil fuels. If it rained a lot would you call it climate change instead of global warming.

  7. apneaman on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 9:34 pm 

    Sure zoid it all a conspiracy involving a million scientists and technicians, etc from over 100 countries trying to steal your freedumb. And it all started back in the 1800’s when CO2 was first scientifically proven to trap heat energy. There was freedumb stealing liberals back then too – playing the long conspiracy game. Ask plany why she does not believe in the hoax. Don’t worry your little head, there was never any chance that we would stop burning fossil carbon – ever. When oil stops being economical there will be a major reduction in its extraction and use, but we will burn coal till doomsday and wood and peat and eventually the vinyl siding.

    NASA: World Just Saw its Hottest June, July and August on Record

    http://robertscribbler.com/2015/09/14/nasa-world-just-saw-its-hottest-june-july-and-august-on-record/#comments

  8. Makati1 on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 10:04 pm 

    zoidberger, you are just in denial of the obvious. Perhaps you are too young to remember the planet only 60-70 years ago? There have been signs of global warming and climate change at least that long. The speed of change is increasing daily. Those 50-100 year projections of the last decade are now only 10-20 years away. In your lifetime, probably. Prepare or fail. Your choice.

  9. Fat Lady on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 11:31 pm 

    The tell for California and the rest in these drought plagued regions, will be this coming fall/winter. One more dry year and I would expect the Midwest will be inundated with broke debt ridden people looking for another place to live. Might even bring back the housing market in areas that were hard hit by the recession. Of course then there is the food problem.

  10. James Tipper on Tue, 15th Sep 2015 12:06 am 

    I understand this is part of the general “decline” theme but I really don’t see what it has to do with peak oil. With peak oil and lower co2 emissions we might see a big turnaround! Whether we want it or not is pretty irrelevant though.

    Peakoil is pretty much grasping at any clickbait they can find. I mean that Alex Jones article? That guy is a nutcase. They should try harder in the future, I know it’s just a collection of articles, but they need to discriminate between what is “peak oil” vs. “decline” vs “environment”. That could be like three different websites.

  11. Makati1 on Tue, 15th Sep 2015 12:33 am 

    James, it is all as a result of oil. Climate change may not have happened if we had not burned millions of years of sun energy in a few centuries. The economy is also the result of the ending of that sun energy inheritance. Now we pay the price, not in dollars but in suffering and death.

    I enjoy this site because of the cross section of people who comment and debate here. Numerous parts of the world, all ages and mentalities are represented. ALL sites need some form of support to exist. That I do not have to pay for it directly is fine with me. Klick on!

  12. theedrich on Tue, 15th Sep 2015 3:08 am 

    Like most species, we have little prevision of our actions.  Whether it is the Bush-Obama wars, the depraved murderousness of Mohammedanism and its invasion of Whiteland, or the globe’s insatiable demand for oil, to mention but a few factors, nothing is going to stop our biocide.

    The traditional way of “growing” a nation was through warfare, whether overt or through the covert support of insurgent elements.  To this has now been added the major bribery of politicians and the use of modern propaganda to sedate target populations.  (Ever since Britain’s Opium Wars against China, export of narcotics to weak cultures and nations has also played a role.)  But with “growth” seemingly benefitting most of mankind, abstention from the common feeding frenzy is not going to happen.

    In the West, the cultural weak point is Christianity with its blather about “compassion” and helping “the poor.”  The media loves showing dead or crying Mohammedan or Latino babies and children, to say nothing about producing an endless supply of sob stories which Whitey is supposed to help out with.  After all, according to the aforesaid Levantine religion, “we” (meaning Whites) are all fallen as a result of our protoparents having eaten an apple.  (This is the literal interpretation subconsciously accepted by the masses — including by atheists who do not even believe in a god.)  Only committing suicide by giving our civilization over to pristine natives (e.g., “Native Americans,” “First Nations,” “undocumented immigrants” or any other type of parasite) will assure a postmortem award.  As will expanding our dysgenics by making sure defectives of all kinds can breed to their gonads’ content.  But we must in any case make sure that all invading ThirdWorlders have as much oil and other resources as traditional Americans.  Never mind that this approach only accelerates the demise of the biosphere.

    No one dares mention that the vast majority of earth-killing causes are the result of ThirdWorld expansion.  The denizens of that world all have a burning desire to move to Whitey’s countries and turn them into the same type of hellholes whence they themselves originate.  And Christianity (with an assist from Judaism) is all about helping them achieve that “dream.”  Since we in the U.S. have a prez who hates Whites and has even generated a war against police (“the White power structure”) by blacks, we now have a perfect storm.  All politics is local.  Experience has shown that, even when a popular politician is exposed as a crook or an alcoholic, his voters will keep electing him again and again.  Thus there is no chance that our life form is going to stop before going over the brink.  That is what lemmings always do.

  13. Davy on Tue, 15th Sep 2015 5:21 am 

    James, if you have come to Peak Oil dot com and stayed awhile then you have come to the realization that peak oil is one of the pillars of doom. Others are AGW climate change, financial collapse, and geopolitical decline as only a few of a much longer list. We have become habituated to a fragile status quo. We have been born and raised into a life where we feel security and significance being human and intelligent. This has especially been true in the last 100 years of amazing technological advances. We feel exceptional and immortal because of this.

    We have now hit limits and are seeing declining marginal utility from aggregate entropic decay. In other words this society is in decline. Consumption and population growth is vitally necessary for the global systems continuation but now this growth is a catch 22 with collapse being the result of more consumption and population growth. What is worse is there are no plans to confront nor consensus of impending doom. If we continue to grow we collapse if we stop growing we collapse. A world with 7Bil people relying on oil as a foundational commodity and a complex system of global cooperation from a finite energy intensity is folly. Our food and fuel will not last as we have it now. Species die off when this occurs. Science is plain as day on this subject.

    We are seeing the results of overshoot of both consumption and population. We are seeing the relatively rapid decline of the ecosystem and climate. We are seeing vital resources deplete. Society is in decay with lifestyles and attitudes that have little to do with this reality, are destructive, and immensely wasteful. A truly advanced species would not be where we are today. We should look at ourselves at no more than other species that grow excessively then enter overshoot and experience a die off. It is possible in our case a bottleneck of just a few survivors. This requires humility not exceptionalism.

    The time frame on all of this is the key question. If this is going to happen in a few years then it is vitally important to us humans with very short attention spans right here right now. If it is a decade in the future then it is not so important to us individuals. In the case of the individual your cavalier attitude is justified. You cavalier disposition is not justified in regards to macroeconomic and geopolitical realities. We need 20 to 30 years for a true transition and that is in the best of conditions. We are seeing every indication survival through technology and complexity has hit limits and any attempts to save it though technology and complexity will not scale in time or resources. This is the basis of doom if true.

    We are here at Peak Oil dot com for many reasons some of them oil but also the exploration of the other pillars of doom. If you understand peak oil then you are a doomer. If you are a doomer you have moved up the ladder of understanding. You have matured intellectually and now look to the other pillars of doom. You are keenly aware for your own survival within a time frame and global reality of decline and descent. The site says Peak Oil dot com but it is in reality Doom dot com.

    I am here every day because I hope to have an edge on decision making with my preparations and investments. Being ahead of the herd is always a plus. There are also those here who are in denial of the truth of the situation we are in. They are here to argue what doomers feel is an unsupportable argument that we have little to worry about. There are those who strictly just want to discuss oil issues. The problem with only oil issues is you run out of topics. We have hammered that monkey to death. There are the few flag waiving Americans who talk up a failed American dream and a large amount of anti-Americans that come to peak oil dot come to potty mouth, name call, and death wish Americans.

    The mixture of all this creates a tasty soup that many of us feast on daily. We are the few and the proud embracing the truth. The truth is not happy face or doom. The truth, most fully found through nature is ambivalent about good or bad in regards to humans. Humans as part of nature does make the good and bad of humans relevant but only at one dimensional level. Nature is so many more dimensions and will go on with or without humans.

    Peak oil dot come and our messy free-for-all board deals with this like the local tavern. If you want to get the peak oil news in sanitized form go over to the member side. I imagine they are like a church group over there treating each other with respect and love. Over here on this Wild West saloon board we are the heathens. Heathens have more fun if you could call doom fun.

  14. seen from sirius on Tue, 15th Sep 2015 6:23 am 

    The Californians (most of them anyway) couldn’t care less. They go on driving their guzzlers (the size of trucks 50 years ago)and dreaming of McMansions and giant malls. All I hope is that when the shit actually will hit the fan, they will get the due punishments their ignorance egotism hubris and stupidity more than deserve.

  15. Rodster on Tue, 15th Sep 2015 6:36 am 

    What’s happening to California is a microcosm of what will happen to much of the world in the future. It may not be tomorrow but it will arrive at some point. We are beginning to see when the planet gives humanity the middle finger for decades and centuries of mismanagement and abuse of its ecosystems.

    This is all just the opening act, imagine what it will really be like when Earth really pushes back. We get closer to that day. Reacting when we are in the middle of Earth’s fury is like trying to gather your belongings while your house is on fire. I’m a realist, not a doomer. You can’t sustain the unsustainable nor can you achieve infinite growth in a finite world. The planet always wins and it has happened to civilizations throughout history.

  16. Rodster on Tue, 15th Sep 2015 6:45 am 

    I’d say and many others have said, this time is much different because every Nation on the planet WANTS the same toys and we are all interconnected with each other which is a first. It’s no secret our timeline in history is being called the “sixth great mass extinction”. Some think we will eventually make it thru albeit with a much smaller population. I have serious doubts that will happen.

    As George Carlin once said, “pack your shit folks, you’re going away and you won’t leave much of a trace behind maybe some plastic, MAYBE”.

  17. Kenz300 on Tue, 15th Sep 2015 9:26 am 

    We all will be impacted by Climate Change.

    It is time to reduce our use of fossil fuels and increase the use of alternative energy sources.

    Climate Change is real….. we need to deal with the cause (fossil fuels)

    Listen Up: Pope Calls for the Replacement of Fossil Fuels, Renewable Energy and Solar Subsidies – Renewable Energy World

    http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2015/07/listen-up-pope-calls-for-the-replacement-of-fossil-fuels-renewable-energy-and-solar-subsidies.html

  18. penury on Tue, 15th Sep 2015 9:35 am 

    Calif gets all the publicity and rightly so however Oregon, Wa, Idaho, Ariz, Nevada, Tex,Okla, are not too far behind, even Alaska and B.C. are joining in. People looking for El Nino to save us may be given a nasty suprise.

  19. Makati1 on Tue, 15th Sep 2015 11:30 am 

    penury, you are right that it may surprise. What good is rain if it falls and floods and runs off? Especially at the wrong point in the growing season. Tomatoes will split open with too much rain at the time they fruit. Lettuce will die if there is a few days without rain or serious irrigation. Hay cannot be harvested if it rains too much. Ditto for all food sources. Water is needed at certain times and not at others.

    The US has only existed in the exception to the normal weather for the continent. The only taste of what is coming was in the Dust Bowl days early last century. You would have thought that that would have taught us to conserve our resources, like water and top soil, but it didn’t. We don’t learn from history because “today is different”. Well, it certainly is going to be a different tomorrow. And we will not like the ‘difference’. LMAO

  20. Davy on Tue, 15th Sep 2015 11:33 am 

    Pen, Missouri has been fantastic this spring and summer but I know it won’t last. Today’s weather is about as perfect as it gets. I am putting up high tensile electric fence and enjoying every minute.

  21. tahoe1780 on Tue, 15th Sep 2015 11:48 am 

    http://ecowatch.com/2015/08/01/interactive-wildfire-map/

    El Nino is expected to drive moisture south of Oregon this winter

    http://www.oregon.gov/oda/programs/naturalresources/documents/weather/dlongrange.pdf


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