Does global warming cause droughts and droughts increase global warming?

Question

A study carried out by the NOAA has reaffirmed a link between the droughts that have plagued many parts of the U.S. and climate change...this study has posited that droughts may in fact be aggravating climate change by hindering the uptake of millions of tons of carbon dioxide.

Using NOAA's new atmospheric monitoring and modeling system, CarbonTracker, lead scientist Andy Jacobson of the University of Colorado found that the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by soil and vegetation plunged from an average of 650m metric tons a year to 330m metric tons. The culprit, according to Jacobson and his colleagues, is the drought that swept across close to 45% of North America in 2002.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/11/droughts_found.php

What do you make of this finding? Perhaps another positive feedback that climate models have not taken into account, indicating once again that global warming predictions are too conservative?

Definition of "reactionary science" = science that leads to a conclusion you don't like.

Or by Jello's claimed definition, explaining why an apple fell off a tree is just reactionary science! Newton wasn't the father of physics, he was just a reactionary!

zion - lay down the crackpipe please.

Answer 1

Just another positive feedback as you said.
-Saturated oceans unable to take up CO2 as carbonic acid.
-Acidified oceans preventing the formation of calcium carbonate
-Cutting down the rainforests reducing their effectiveness as a carbon sink
-With the absence of a cold weather kill the mountain pine beetle is killing off millions of spruce trees in the northern coniferous forests reducing their effectiveness as a carbon sink
How many more feedbacks are waiting to be discovered that we haven't found yet.

mt_zion_crusader- (interesting albeit suitable name for a sceptic) did you ever consider that this is likely the first time in climate history that has seen this combination of increasing CO2 combined with an artificially induced handicap for carbon uptake? You want to know about a negative feedback? There may come a day when we see a negative feedback from the reduction of humans. Believe me mt_zion_crusader, the only person you embarrassed was mt_zion_crusader.

Answer 2

It's well known that humans cause desertification by removing vegetation.

If we are accelerating the amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere at the same time we are accelerating the removal of the carbon sink, that's an obvious problem.

This isn't about environmental alarmism - It's common sense.

My opinion? I think in the years to come, as the science and the models mature, there will be many more postitive and negative feedbacks found. So, we should just shrug it off, continue business as usual, and let the chips fall? That's taking on a lot of risk.

Answer 3

According to an article I read today it's because of the sub arctic jet stream. The jet stream separates the reletively cold wet arctic air from the warm dry southern air. When the difference in northern and southern temperatures is large, the jet stream moves fast (along with the loops in it that swing down south once in awhile). When the northern air warms, there is less of a temperature difference and the jet stream doesn't move so fast, and the loops it makes don't move over the ground as fast either. When the loops don't move, an area is stuck with whatever weather they have; if it's raining it will continue to rain for weeks/months/years, if it's hot and dry it will remain that way.

Answer 4

People cause desserts or at least start theM off
too many desserts means less forests to precipitate rain so can produce droughts

A hotter inland sun over dry land ,
(because of global warming )
can produce droughts

as well as super evaporation over water or forests (which some call standing lakes) and can produce excess super rains at the same time in other places

So both drought and flooding s can relate to Global warming .

It is my opinion that an increase in deserts ,will collectively have an effect on overall global temperatures ,making the place hotter during the day time ,and and colder at night

Trees absorb heat in the day and release it at night ,
In a country which is mostly desert it is hotter ,than a place full of woods ,(at least if you are under the trees.)

And because of deforestation ,there is less precipitation.leading to droughts.And less foliage to absorb carbon

and so we go round and round ,

This is just the Natural side

Pretty safe to say that Global Warming destroys vegetations,in many places , for a variety of reason ,including changes in the microscopic world and insects and the fauna that depends on that .

,changes with pollination ,subsequent changes with flora that can handle it or not handle it .

So it must be a chain of events interrelated,that can produce more drought in certain places and more water in others .

Global Warming results in Climatic changes going both directions ,toward warm as well as towards cold .All depending on where you are ,


If there is a shift in the poles ,as has been suggested ,and it has happened before
some people will go into an ice age and others will start cooking

If both poles continue to melt and there is no new build up of ice ,which the green house effect tends to point to, we will end up with a hotwater world .

Lets see what happens if the Ocean currents stop moving because there will not be a cold current any more if all the ice is gone .
This will change the face of the Earth in one year ,and the air we have left to breathe will have changed along with it .

Probably huge inland deserts and forested shores on the high lands still above the water .

So many interrelating factors with effects that increase in speed with time ,becoming faster all the time
that i am not putting any money on a definite prediction of any kind

it is like knowledge
100 years ago it took a life time to learn something
50 years later it took a few years ,now it is months
and then it will be weeks
this is what is happening with the meltdown and the climatic changes
Everything is happening faster all the time

This escalating speed factor is in few calculations from any of the present scientific data which keeps changing .

and i am not a scientist

But i do know this, when plants or trees get too hot ,they go into a state of hibernation ,a sort of stand by
they don`t die .but they do not function .like growth either.

and the sea absorbs carbon when it is cooler .and releases it when it gets warmer,
so if we only got warm seas?????

Answer 5

Climate modelling is not a perfect science that can predict everything precisely , it is just an analytical tool which will continue to be refined and altered as more firm subsets of data become available. The same is true of all modelling practices , in economics, particle physics etc. In global warming there are so many variables and in particular uncertainties as to the effects of feedbacks like the one you mention, the effects on oceanic carbon take up of lessening salinity and rising water temperatures and the release of methane stored in the melting arctic tundra - to name just a few. Modelling is a continuous process, it does not have all the answers and maybe never will, but it is already sophisticated enough to show the principal dimensions of the
problem we are facing now and the extent to which it could worsen in future decades. On existing data, I understand that on balance the American mid-west and south-west are likely to experience increasing drought conditions and weather variability.
As for the global warming deniers it is a waste of time listening to them and replying to their b/s. Even the big corporations in Europe are now taking it so seriously they are urging governments to do more as they realise the future costs of not doing anything will far outweigh the costs of action now.

Answer 6

It really indicates the importance of vegetation with regards to CO2 uptake. If you remove a lot of vegetation, it significantly decreases the ability of the Earth to remove the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

That's the other side of the global warming debate that few people are talking about...tree and vegetation loss. Over the last 100 years, trees and vegetation has been removed at ever increasing rates to make way for urban sprawl. These trees and vegetation served a purpose to remove CO2 out of the air. Now much of it is gone, while at the same time, we're significantly increasing CO2 emissions.

Answer 7

Again this is reactionary science. You can also find proof that global warming causes floods to increase.

Global warming is nothing more than someone making the observation that it's dry (or wet, or warm, or cold) then spinning some pseudo scientific speech about how global warming is responsible for the drought (or flood, or warmth, or cold) and the problem with the drought (or flood, or warmth, or cold) is that it provides positive feedback which only makes the drought (or flood, or warmth, or cold) even worse.

With all the knowledge that the scientist have and with all the computer models available, why can't you tell us how much longer the droughts will last, or where and when the next flood will be? Just tell us if it will be warmer or colder this winter.

Somehow I think you can't.

And only believers are able to see what is happening when it comes to global warming. If a "skeptic" made a statement that showed that the claims aren't as bad as expected, well that's only weather.

[Edit]

Reactionary science - finding the answer first then writing the science to describe the cause.

How could it possibly be a conclusion you don't like? That's a politicians view. A real scientist doesn't care where the science leads as long as the science is objective.

I wonder if you repeat your experiments until you get the results you are looking for?

[Edit]

I'll give you the first apple. However today we can tell the exact distance the apple dropped, the exact speed the apple is traveling, and the exact rate of acceleration of the apple at any point of time.

You still can't tell us if it's going to be warmer or colder next month regardless of how much co2 is in the air.

Answer 8

"Perhaps another positive feedback the climate models haven't taken into account"??

I thought we were done polishing the climate models. Are you saying that there might be MORE parameters that we don't know about? Is it possible that there might be NEGATIVE feedbacks that we haven't accounted for yet? How many parameters are the climate models up to now?

With all of these positive feedbacks lurking, why didn't things spin out of control earlier?

P.S. Did you ever study when you took your physics classes? You might want to look up what potential energy is.

Sorry, Dana, I didn't mean to embarrass you on a public forum.

Answer 9

Did you ever notice that GW only causes droughts and flooding. It never causes more rain in dry areas and never reduces rain in wet areas. Believe it or not, droughts have been around for a long time. Can't you look through the fog you have created and see that this is simply research drummed up by GW research industrial complex. When gloom and doom conclusions provide greater incentives for further research, they tend to be self perpetuating. The predictions always get more extreme and venture further and further from reality.

PS If you objectively read Janniel? (previous poster) response there are all sorts of leftist gems in there to show once again what a political motivated phenomena GW really is.

Answer 10

Jacobson is with NOAA in Boulder I believe. not Colorado U
Any how none of that links climate change to us monkeys but to drought so we already know that climate change aint done by monkey man.