Warmer Earth might be wetter, scientists find

[Sequoia]

In a report that challenges conventional wisdom, Earth might become much rainier if planetary warming continues unabated, a Santa Rosa team of experts on climate change announced today.

Over the next 100 years, global rainfall could increase by about 20 percent -- three times as fast as the rate projected previously by global-warming scientists -- if greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue unabated, said physicist Frank Wentz and colleagues at Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa. Their report appears in today's issue of Science Express, an online publication associated with Science magazine.

Their study is not precise enough to forecast how increasing global warming will affect rainfall in specific regions such as California, Wentz said. Still, his team's analysis of 19 years of planetary rainfall and humidity data hints that global warming might portend "a general tendency to make the wetter areas wetter and the drier areas drier -- which, when it comes to climate change, is a pretty gloomy scenario," he told The Chronicle on Thursday.

Kelly T. Redmond, deputy director of the Western Regional Climate Center at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, called the report a very interesting paper.

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/01/BAGD4Q5TM91.DTL&type=science

[NMDemDist2]

1. I supposedly live in a desert and we've gotten our average yearly rain

already and the year's not half over :shrug:

[poverlay]

3. I don't know where Dist 6 is, but I thought we were short by half of what we need/expected/hoped for

here in AZ? I'd love to see what happens to Arizona if our precipitation increased dramatically. That would be so cool. Can you imagine the desert blooming like nuts? It would be so beautiful!

[NMDemDist2]

4. i'm in NM now and it's been a *very* wet spring n/t

[poverlay]

10. When I was 10 I lived in White Rock(Los Alamos), and it was the most beautiful place ever! n/t

[Warpy]

5. Tell me about it

Eleven years in this place and I finally had to spring for an electric lawn mower.

The desert plants in the front that survived drought and neglect when I was in Florida for weeks at a time are now getting almost too big. The flowers are beautiful, though. I expect the chamisa to be drop dead gorgeous this fall.

[NMDemDist2]

6. i still have an acre of weeds. I've burned 4 gallons of gas trying to

mow them down, but they grown faster than I can push.

I miss my electric mower, but this area is too large to deal with extension cords :cry:

[Sequoia]

8. Get some goats.

Not only will they mow your lawn you can get cheese from them too. Only females of course in case you city slickers were wondering.

[NMDemDist2]

9. they don't eat mustard or tumbleweed which is my problem

and they *will* eat my apple and apricot trees

I've already researched it :cry:

[Sequoia]

11. I thought goats ate everything. Bummer.

Picky, picky.

[Thirtieschild]

7. Three years of above-average moisture, and ahead this year

We live in the SW corner of the state, average 16 inches a year. We have a weather station and the numbers are:

2007 (so far) 8.25
2006 22.25
2005 18.69
2004 18.69
2003 13.55
2002 didn't have it

I figure we're getting someone else's moisture - Georgia? Florida? Seems to me that when one place gets more rain than usual someplace else isn't getting what's rightfully theirs.

[phantom power]

2. Right.. Wetter. Except where it's dryer.

[XemaSab]

12. More ET from the oceans=

more rainfall. :shrug: