21st Century US 'dustbowl' risk assessed

[Still Waters]

US scientists have modelled how a 1930s-like "dustbowl" drought might impact American agriculture today, and found it to be just as damaging.

But the research shows the effects to be very sensitive to temperature, meaning the potential losses would be far worse later this century if Earth's climate heats up as expected.

A repeat of 1930s weather today would lead to a 40% loss in maize production.

In a 2-degree warmer world, it becomes a 65% reduction, the team projects.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-35566151

[Paranormalcy]

Oklahoma was almost nothing, but the Army Corps of Engineering came in, the federal government spent the money, and they BUILT lakes here, and now we have hunting and fishing just about year round. So even if a new Dustbowl DOES happen, it CAN be fixed, at least in a spot-by-spot basis, if the government just DOES it. Like I saw relating to some other issue: You mean we put a man on the MOON, split the atom and defeated the Nazis - but THIS issue - THIS is just impossible?! Not likely!

[Indiogene]

Perhaps the Great Plains and Midwest, along with the entire Western states will experience the greatest drought ever (CA currently under one). In the 1930s, global temperatures were above-average for a brief period, now we have global warming, climate change and some parts of the world will have a new ice age. We're going to have another "dust bowl" and already CA's fertile farm valleys, normally dry or semi-arid, are turning into new Death valleys running out of water supplies forever, unless conservationists are able to increase aquifers to make irrigation water more available for farmers and urban residents alike.

[Peter B]

Oklahoma was almost nothing, but the Army Corps of Engineering came in, the federal government spent the money, and they BUILT lakes here, and now we have hunting and fishing just about year round. So even if a new Dustbowl DOES happen, it CAN be fixed, at least in a spot-by-spot basis, if the government just DOES it. Like I saw relating to some other issue: You mean we put a man on the MOON, split the atom and defeated the Nazis - but THIS issue - THIS is just impossible?! Not likely!

Out of interest, where does the water come from for those lakes? What happens if there's a, say, six year drought (as we've had recently in Australia)?

I imagine the water could be carted in from elsewhere, but what would the cost of that be?

[Paranormalcy]

Honestly, it's been a while since I looked into this, but basically, "up north" (Canada, South Dakota, Montana, etc) have a number of rivers and dams and they're arranged (probably some by accident, some by design) that feed into our own lakes, some rivers and groundwater, that basically, all our lake water is "imported", because it comes down the river channels all the way down to Oklahoma (all the dams are built on the river channels, from my understanding). If you don't have that to begin with, I'd imagnie that's a significant problem. I wonder if it's possible to "fix" that, in places like Australia.

[GlitterRose]

No doubt, severe weather and droughts are going to be an ever-increasing problem. At least there are some people who are actually looking into it and trying to do something.

[Doug1029]

Out of interest, where does the water come from for those lakes? What happens if there's a, say, six year drought (as we've had recently in Australia)?

The Arkansas River rises in Colorado, near Buena Vista. The Cimarron rises in New Mexico near Ute Park. The Red River rises in the Texas panhandle and the Canadian rises in New Mexico. The Deep Fork is a home-grown river, rising near Oklahoma City.

Our (Oklahoma's) water is mostly coming from Colorado and New Mexico where river flows are heavily affected by snowfall.

Texas and Oklahoma are fighting over water from Lake Texoma. Oklahoma has the water rights, Texas' argument is, basically, "That ain't fair." The tribes own a lot of the water rights in Oklahoma, so they're going to be major players.

Construction of all those lakes has raised the humidity so that what used to be hot is now hardly bearable.

The 2011 drought was the most-severe, if short-duration, drought in state history. Bokhoma Log Pond went dry for the only time in its history (It was dug in 1907.). The worst drought in our history was the 1950s drought. The Dust Bowl is remembered mostly because it combined drought, bad farming practices and the Great Depression, all in one place. Better farming practices have pretty much mitigated a Dust Bowl type of drought - it would take a really nasty one to top that, but we just might get one that bad. FDR wanted to build a Canada-to-Mexico wind break. The CCCs actually got part of it planted - that part is now called the "Nebraska National Forest;" it really is a completely artificial forest.

The big concern about droughts, other than a shortage of water for farms and small town, is the loss of grass cover. We have a lot of sand hills - grassed-over sand dunes - and if a fire or a farmer cleared the grass away at the wrong time, those dunes would reactivate. That will probably happen in the next major drought in this area.

If you want some interesting reading on droughts in the nineteenth-century American west, try reading:

Muhs, D. and V. Holliday,1995. Evidence of active dune sand on the Great Plains in the 19^th century from accounts of early explorers. Quarternary Research 43, 195-208, and

Herweijer, C., R. Seager and E. Cook, 2005. North American droughts of the mid to late nineteenth century: a history, simulation and implication for Mediaeval drought. The Holocene 16 (2):159-171.

Doug