“There’s a danger in assuming that climate change is only going to be gradual…. forest managers … will really have to think carefully about what they’re planting now.”
“France, hit hardest by the heatwave, lost 20% of its usual harvest.”
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Randy Babb, a biologist with the Arizona Game and Fish Department, offers the Gambel’s Quail as Exhibit A on the impact of the state’s drought.
The birds forage on winter annuals that contain a chemical similar to estrogen. In dry years, when those plants are sparse, quail hens lay fewer eggs, and hatchlings are more likely to die because of lack of food and cover, Babb says. Twelve extremely dry years have devastated Arizona’s quail population, he says.
“This drought is catastrophic,” Babb says. “No one alive has seen a drought of this severity.”
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SCIENCE
VOL 316
25 MAY 2007
Model Projections of an Imminent Transition to a More Arid Climate in Southwestern North America
Richard Seager, et al
SUMMARY — How anthropogenic climate change will affect hydroclimate in the arid regions of southwestern North America has implications for the allocation of water resources and the course of regional development. Here we show that there is a broad consensus among climate models that this region will dry in the 21st century and that the transition to a more arid climate should already be under way. If these models are correct, the levels of aridity of the recent multiyear drought or the Dust Bowl and the 1950s droughts will become the new climatology of the
American Southwest within a time frame of years to decades.
I have the complete article as a pdf file, and can send it to anyone interested in it for educational, scientific or related purposes.
Lance: lance@wildrockies.org
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