So, As Columbia Emerges From Reservoir, What's Frying TX? Stuck Jet Stream? La Nina?

[hatrack]

So far the relentless heatwave scorching Texas has killed numerous crops and dried up the reservoir in San Angelo State Park, leaving a shallow pool of blood-red water teeming with red bacteria that thrive in low oxygen. The drought in Lake Nacogdoches has exposed a piece of the space shuttle Columbia, which broke apart over Texas in 2003. In neighbouring states the heat has warped railroad tracks and exploded sidewalks.



Meteorologists are split on the causes, some blaming a La Niña weather pattern, others a jet stream that's stuck in one place. In the "little girl" corner, Martin Hoerling of the Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, says both the extreme heat and drought are largely explained by lingering effects of the most recent La Niña, which lasted from last summer to last spring. During La Niña, the temperature of the ocean's surface along the equator from the middle of the Pacific Ocean to South America is lower than normal, which influences rainfall in the tropics and the movement of tropical storms across the Pacific and into the US.

In 19 out of the past 20 La Niñas, storm clouds moved across the northern US, bypassing Texas and neighbouring states. The result was drought in the southern US, explains Hoerling. In turn, drought pushes temperatures up, because parched soil and the air above it are more vulnerable to overheating.

Hoerling has calculated just how hot and dry Texas has been over the past year compared with historic averages from 1971 to 2000. From 1 October last year to last Sunday, Texas and nearby states were 1.94 ºC hotter than usual and some regions in west Texas had less than a quarter of normal rainfall.

EDIT

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20794-is-la-nina-or-a-constipated-jet-stream-frying-texas.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=environment

[dtexdem]

1. Easy: Guv Perry's prayers for rain.

[rurallib]

2. seems God sent the rain to the northeast.

Nice shooting there, Guv.

[Javaman]

3. cement head perry is the "get smart" of governors..

"missed it by that much!"

:rofl:

I have to laugh because otherwise I would cry. he's my governor.

[GliderGuider]

4. I wonder if this has a bearing on things?

Rivers in the sky

Like freight trains loaded with water vapor, atmospheric rivers are long, narrow bands whose winds funnel huge amounts of moisture through the sky. When they hit coasts, these rivers can drop their moisture as rain and cause destructive flooding, as in January 2005 when more than 20 inches of rain soaked southern California, killing 14 people and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.

“Water is life, and atmospheric rivers provide water,” says Paul Neiman, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. New research is revealing how these rivers work, as well as helping forecasters better predict their consequences.

At any given time, somewhere between three and five atmospheric rivers are typically ferrying water in each hemisphere. More than 1,000 kilometers long, they are often no wider than 400 kilometers and carry the equivalent, in water vapor, of the flow at the Mississippi River’s mouth. “That has really captured the imagination of scientists,” says Marty Ralph, also a meteorologist at the Boulder lab. “There are only a handful of these events, and yet they do the work of transporting 90-plus percent of water vapor on the planet.”

Atmospheric rivers may become even more relevant as global temperatures rise. Researchers aren’t sure exactly how climate change will affect the rivers, but warmer air generally means that the atmosphere can hold more water vapor, says Neiman. On the other hand, winds may weaken in a globally warmed world, meaning the rivers might carry more water but be less effective at delivering it.