AP: Deserts Expanding With Jet Stream Shift: "moving poleward"

Deserts Expanding With Jet Stream Shift
May 25
By ANDREW BRIDGES
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON

Deserts in the American Southwest and around the globe are creeping toward heavily populated areas as the jet streams shift, researchers reported Thursday.

The result: Areas already stressed by drought may get even drier.

Satellite measurements made from 1979 to 2005 show that the atmosphere in the subtropical regions both north and south of the equator is heating up. As the atmosphere warms, it bulges out at the altitudes where the northern and southern jet streams slip past like swift and massive rivers of air. That bulging has pushed both jet streams about 70 miles closer to the Earth's poles.

Since the jet streams mark the edge of the tropics, in essence framing the hot zone that hugs the equator, their outward movement has allowed the tropics to grow wider by about 140 miles. That means the relatively drier subtropics move as well, pushing closer to places like Salt Lake City, where Thomas Reichler, co-author of the new study, teaches meteorology.

"One of the immediate consequences one can think of is those deserts and dry areas are moving poleward," said Reichler, of the University of Utah. Details appear in Thursday's Science Express, the online edition of the journal Science....

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/05/25/D8HR4K6G0.html

to provide water for their residents. This is one reason I am glad I live in the Great Lakes region.

Call me unsympathetic, but moving to an area where they have to pipe in water has always struck me as somewhat foolish. Nature will win out everytime against human arrogance.

the situation is moving very close to water rationing. There is an unbelievable drought. It is so dry, the cacti are scorched. People who have grass are beginning to have it dug up.

on edit: yeah, the plural is cacti

your cacti.

and I'm in Dallas. Grass is high enough maintenance in "wet" areas, let alone in a desert. We've replaced large sections of our lawn with xeriscape plants. They are more beautiful then grass and most are completely maintenance free. I think grass is a dumb idea anywhere except for sports fields and golf courses. What were people thinking?

Seeing Phoenix and Las Vegas become 'hot' real estate markets over the last few years has also left me perplexed.

how many can you put up for a few years?

"Sun Belt" cities....there is plenty of room for folks who choose to return. I would rather have an influx of new residents than pipe water out of the region, which I am sure is on the mind of certain politicians.

Quite a few! Come up and see for yourself!

if the arid subtropics move north, the wetter tropics regime ought to be expanding poleward as well, so the dry areas closest to the equator should start getting wetter.

maybe.

Msongs
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... the dry descending air which makes up those subtropical high pressure belts would have to be coming from somewhere. Namely, the Intertropical Convergence Zone (or rather, the equatorial low -- characterized by warm moist air that's rising). Currently the areas under the ITCZ have frequent precipitation, as you point out. And especially in places which have a lot of water (e.g. the oceans along the equator, if not the tropical forests and wetlands), there should be plenty of moisture to feed even a dramatic increase in evaporative demand.

Certainly worth looking into -- I wonder if the climate models they mention have turned up anything re: extension of rainy season in "summer wet season" climates?

Might also be repercussions for monsoon circulation.

Somebody posted the new maps of climate zones here recently. I'm sorry I don't have the link. Almost every part of the country has moved "up" a zone. My area used to be gardening zone 7 - now my whole state is zone 8.

here is the url for the new zone map:

http://www.arborday.org/media/zones.cfm

Check out the differences between 1990 and 2004!

And still there will be folks in total denial.

Is there a good reason why we can't transport water from the wet parts of the country to the dry parts? The Romans did it. Some South American cultures did it. What's our bloody problem?

In addition to solving our water distribution problems, it would put vast numbers of Americans to work.

It's the reason why the Rio Grande doesn't reach the sea anymore. And it devastates environments.

folks in the Great Lakes region are fiercely opposed to any diversion of water from the lakes to arid regions. Look at the big lakes in Russia that have been almost completly drained because of water diversion.

The solution is not to divert more water, but to discourage development of arid regions.

Discouraging development in areas that cannot sustain it is critical. When I think of golf courses in Arizona, in Utah, in New Mexico, in Nevada....it just sickens me. How many billions of gallons of precious water do we waste so a minority of the population can play a boring game on manicured courses???

All this unwise development has a rippling effect on the environment and, by extension, the economy. We are ensuring the future generations will have issues that we have not even thought of yet.

But it's all OK....the corporations are getting their three pounds of flesh. :sarcasm:

Reverse the flow of the Missouri and Platte Rivers and then dig a tunnel through the sub hills of the Rockies, connecting this to the Rio Grande (Providing Water from the Great Lakes). Afterward, we can cut another tunnel through the Rockies to the Colorado (Getting Water into the Rest of the South West). You can measure this is Hundreds of Trillions of Dollars. We can NOT afford it, no one can. It is a pipe dream.

If we decide to keep this strictly in the west, Digging a Ditch through the Great Basin from the Snake or Columbian Rivers would be cheaper than from the Mississippi, still in the hundreds of Trillions of Dollar for you STILL have to cut through mountains. The Same with the Missouri, the Rockies are NOT something you can ignore away.

The third option of reversing the Red River to the Rio Grande is more doable, but again expensive for most of its water comes from streams joining it as it approaches the Mississippi (This ie do to the fact that the water that flows in the Red comes from the Caribbean and falls as rain over Eastern Texas and into Oklahoma and Arkansas. Thus you just can NOT reverse flow the upper Red River, it goes not have that big a flow, you have top reverse flow the LOWER Red River and again you are looking at digging a ditch so deep that it will cost hundreds of Trillions of Dollars). The Upper Missouri suffers from a similar Situation (Through it is Further north and thus gets a lot of water do to the West-East flow of Rain Storms that is characteristics of Temperate Climates).

Now you can cut the cost of moving the water Westward by pumping the water over some of the Mountains, but this will be EXPENSIVE (Do to high energy costs) given the height you have to lift the water. Thus want you save in digging you make up in operating costs.

As you can see the problem is NOT our ability to get the water to the Southwest, but getting water to the Southwest at a price WE CAN AFFORD. To reverse flow the above rivers will bankrupt this country.

Please note the above IGNORES the problem of the height of above rivers, if you look below you will see various elevations of the above five Rivers. (Missouri, Plate, Red Rivers and the Rio Grande and the Colorado Rivers), The problem is how DEEP a trench you have to dig to get this water from the Missouri, Plate, and Red Rivers to the Rio Grande and Colorado Rivers. Furthermore the area of the Missouri, Plate, Red Rivers that can provide the needed water is so down stream and the head water of the Colorado and Rio Grande are so HIGH this si not simply a quick cut but a trench on both sides of the diversion (i.e. we will have to DIG the Rio Grande and Colorado rivers out to accept the flow from the Missouri, Plate and Red Rivers) AND to dig them to the point they are BELOW the point we started to reverse flow the Missouri, Plate and Red Rivers (Which mean almost the entire length of the Colorado and Rio Grande Rivers). This digging Adds more to the Project costs (and limiting the Effect of the Flow reversal for the water will not be able to join the Rio Grande and Colorado Rivers until both rivers are much closer to the Coast than where most of the Drought is Occurring).

When you look at a map this becomes CLEAR, The problem with the Southwest it is TO LOW (and the intervening land is to high) compared to where the extra water in the Missouri and Red Rivers is for a direct flow if these rivers were reversed. If you want to take water from the Great lakes or the Mississippi you are looking at EXTREME costs that will DOOM the project before it even starts. This idea is brought up by people who do NOT understand water flow (i.e. it flows DOWNHILL) and basic geography.

A second problem is most of the water that flows into the Great Lakes is from CANADA. This is do to the last Ice age, the Glaciers forced all streams and rivers to flow SOUTHWARD, even if they were within 20 miles of the right is now the Great Lakes. Michigan is the big exception (But it is surrounded on three sides by the Great Lakes and the Northern Peninsular is also sides on Three sides by the Great Lakes). Thus Canada will OBJECT to its water being taken instead of going through the St Lawrence to keep up shipping into and out of the Great Lakes.

Elevation above Sea Level:
River water would be diverted from:
Missouri River:
Maden, ND 1644 Feet
Pierre, SD 1484 Feet
Sioux City Iowa 1115
Omaha NE 1034 Feet (Where the Platte joins the Missouri).
Nemaha NE 886 Feet
Kansas City 750 feet

Platte River:
Park Colorado (Mountain Range from which the Platte starts) 11910
Jefferson CO, 6565 Feet
Lincoln, NE, 1890 (North Channel)
Butler NE 1440 (South Channel)

Red River:
Vernon, TX 1215 Feet
Texarkana, TX 295
Shreveport LA 210 Feet

Rivers getting the water:
Rio Grande River:
Taos NM (Rio Grande) 6565
Bernalillo NM 4951
El Paso TX (Rio Grande) 3695
Bewster, TX 1841
(Notice the Rio Grande is 3/4 through its length and almost to the Gulf of Mexico till it is low enough to take water from the highest point of the Red River where you have sufficient water flow). The Platte suffers from the same cold facts, where the Plate has sufficient water (as it joins the Missouri) the Platte is to low and the Rio Grande is to hIgh in elevation for this to work. The same with the Missouri (and that is IGNORING the distance between the Rio Grande and these three rivers, it would be MUCH easier to divert the RIO GRANDE into the Red or the Platte but that would be just removing water from the area is shortest supply.

Colorado River:
Coconino AZ (Little Colorado River) 5010 Feet
Las Vegas NV (Colorado River) 2028 Feet
La Paz AZ (Colorado River) 367 Feet
Feet Meters Location
9000 2750 Colorado headwaters (Rocky Mountains)
6100 1850 midway to Colorado-Utah border
4300 1300 Colorado-Utah border
3850 1170 midway to Utah-Arizona border
3700 1130 Utah-Arizona border (Wahweap Bay)
3000 900 midway to Grand Canyon (Rider Point)
2800 850 Grand Canyon North Rim
2500 760 Grand Canyon South Rim
1200 365 Lake Mead
600 183 after Hoover Dam
485 150 California-Nevada-Arizona border
100 30 California-Arizona-Mexico border
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_(U.S.)
Thus to connect the Platte or the Missouri Rivers into the Colorado you have to dig from Omaha NE UNDER the Rocky Mountains to a point SOUTH of Las Vegas. This makes the diversion to the Rio Grande look a lot better but BOTH are almost physically impossible.

One last comment, the Missouri is the largest river by Volume discussed above, and it is SMALLER than the Upper Mississippi at St Louis (Where the two rivers meet to form the Lower Mississippi) and the Ohio river which Joins the Mississippi at Cairo Illinois. To get the water needed in the Southwest means DRAINING the Missouri almost completely and even that may NOT be enough (i.e. dig an even deeper trench to get water from the Mississippi itself).

http://www.graphicmaps.com/aatlas/infopage/elvation.htm
http://www.waterwebster.com/index.htm

Agricultural water is subsidized bigtime in california and other arid
climates in the southwest consuming the lions share of the water that is
"being squandered".

A simple solution would be to charge agricultural users the same price
as city users, and then big-ag would have to find another sugar daddy.

As usual, the US problem is corporate welfare, even the water issue
is corporate welfare.

But what I was try into show was moving water was Impossibility of moving Water from the "Wet parts" of the US to the "Dry parts". Basically such a move is impossible, literally you have to PUMP or dig out the rivers to get the water to the dry parts of this country and the costs to do so would bankrupt this country.

On the other hand if people would treat water as something they could BID on then the cities would bid higher for the water than the farmers of the desert. Thus the solution to the water shortage in the Southwest is to leave the people outbid each other for the water of the southwest. farmers will lose out to the cities but the the problem would be at least addressed.

I thought water flowed downhill?

(Sorry, I've been channeling George again.)

So folks in Phoenix can groom their golf courses and top off their swimming pools and Las Vegas can keep those fountains flowing.

Live in the desert -- live WITH the desert.

eom

Take the pledge to See The Truth!

http://www.climatecrisis.net/seethetruth/

exist. I guess that's the same line of thinking as the Dinosaurs didn't exist. Religious Theocracy will destroy this Planet.
Kick and Nom

George AWOL Bush doesn't "believe" in it; therefore it does not exist. More Americans need to endorse the Faith-based approach to climate, then we would have nothing to worry about.

maybe to Canada.

Earlier this year I visted some of the newer subdivisions being built around Cottonwood Arizona ... they're already drilling for water ... the wells are dryin up ... why did they think they could develop the desert? ...

Darn! In the mid-1990s, I asked one of my profs about what global warming might do to the strength and position of the subtropical high pressure zone (which affects summer rainfall patterns right up the west coast, from California to BC, maybe even beyond). He didn't think it was worth following up. (He didn't like my idea about analyzing nighttime minimum temperature records, either ... and a few years back, someone found that these were changing faster than the daytime maximum values.)

Thanks for posting, DMM -- a very informative article!

Look out, it's spreading from the lounge!

:rofl: