NASA/EO - Widespread Temperature Anomalies Across TX Pushing 12C 7-14 April 2011

[hatrack]

So far in 2011, more than 1.4 million acres have burned in Texas. Some 800 fires have occurred throughout the state, burning 401 structures and costing two firefighters their lives. Why is fire activity so extreme in Texas this year? This image, made with data collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, reveals high temperatures that contributed to hazardous fire conditions.

Fire needs dry fuel to burn, and weather conditions in March and April turned Texas into a tinderbox. The state began the winter dry season with abundant vegetation, following a moist spring in 2010. But then drought settled over the state in late 2010 and early 2011, culminating in the driest March on record. Many areas received less than 5 percent of their normal rainfall, according to the state climatologist.

In addition to being dry, March and April were warmer than normal. The top image shows ground temperatures for April 7 to April 14 compared to long-term average for the week. The red tones indicate that most of Texas was much warmer than average, further drying out the abundant grasses, shrubs, and trees already suffering from a lack of rain.

The warm temperatures and dry vegetation combined with high winds and low humidity to create extremely dangerous fire conditions in Texas. Indeed, the MODIS true color image on April 15 showed strong winds blowing long plumes of smoke from multiple fires across the state.

EDIT

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=50202

[damntexdem]

1. Damn! Just when I'm out of marshmallows!

;-)

[JuniperLea]

2. It must be God's will...

How horrible that there are climate change deniers who are now experiencing it for themselves, but are probably too blind to see it for what it is.

[txlibdem]

6. They'll just say it's caused by Socialism...

and that Muslim from Kenya!

[Nederland]

3. Meanwhile, back in the real world...

...global temperatures are plummeting:



I mean seriously, if back in the extremely warm days of 2010 (and there were many of them) I had cherry picked some spot on the globe where it was unusually cold there would have been no end to the ration of shit people would have given me. And it would have been well deserved, because as any honest person knows, this OP is about weather not climate change, despite the implication otherwise. However, I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that absolutely none of the "global warming will kill us all" crowd will have either the balls or the honesty to point this out.

Who knows though, perhaps one of you will surprise me.

[XemaSab]

4. You do of course get that

the real story isn't the 13-month average, it's the fact that the one real "low" in the last decade is right about where the "highs" of the first two decades were?

[Nederland]

5. Don't change the subject

My point is that the OP is utter bullshit if it is trying to make some point about climate change. What the April anomaly is in Texas has absolutely ZERO relevance to the subject climate change. Now perhaps the poster just felt like telling what the weather in Texas has been like these past few weeks, but something tells me s/he had something else in mind.

[txlibdem]

7. Love the chart in post #3 - shows the foolishness of the climate deniers

Look at the red line, the 13 month average temps, and you will see that the lows from 2001 - 2007 and 2009, 2010 are HIGHER than the highs from 1979 onward.

Yes, there are El Nino/La Nina effects that push up or down on the chart but the overall trend is clear -- and the future looks like there is far worse to come.

I guess I need to start looking for that beach front property in Nevada! (Goodbye Florida, you will be missed)

[Nederland]

8. Don't change the subject

My point is that the OP is utter bullshit if it is trying to make some point about climate change. What the April anomaly is in Texas has absolutely ZERO relevance to the subject climate change. The fact that you all continue to refuse to call bullshit on this is merely evidence of your scientific dishonesty. You'll only criticize those who disagree with you. When someone on your side makes a blatantly unscientific claim you sit silent or try to change the subject. Sorry, I'm not going to let you get away with it. So by all means keep kicking this thread so everyone here can see your duplicity first hand.

[GliderGuider]

9. The only one who mentioned climate change in connection with the OP is you.

:shrug:

To the rest of us it's about an extreme weather event in Texas. Gee, they seem to be becoming more common these days. Wonder why? Can you tell me, or is this one weather event unconnected to anything else on the planet?

[Nederland]

10. LOL

I'm NOT the only one who mentioned climate change in connection with the OP. The climate change was brought up in Post #2 by JuniperLea who clearly thought there was a connection. More ironically, climate change was also brought up in post #9 by...you.

Unless you'd care to explain that the words: "Gee, they seem to be becoming more common these days. Wonder why?" was not meant to be a rhetorical question whose answer is AGW.

[hatrack]

11. Please point out any commentary or content in the original post having to do with climate.

Please point out a single fucking word.

Just one.

One. Fucking. Word.

Waiting . . .

[Nederland]

13. I'm sorry

I didn't realize EE had become the Weather Channel.

[hatrack]

14. I have better things to do with my life than waste time reading or responding to your posts

Nice non-answer, btw.

[Nederland]

18. There is no explicit connection between the OP and climate

But obviously if you read the comments of other posters (check out posts #2, #9, and #15) I'm not the only person that saw an implied connection.

[kentauros]

15. This isn't an example of the weather for the past few weeks.

This is an example of our drought for the past 15 years.

Now, I understand that for those not living in Texas during this time, that you can be "forgiven" for not noticing what we've been going through for so long, but there are plenty of sources out there to educate you about our plight. The wildfires are, for the moment, the worst to come from this extreme drought period. "A few weeks" would not be long enough to produce wildfires this severe.

Maybe after reading the following site you'll understand a little more about what we're facing here and how it relates to global climate change:

Hell: “Unprecedented drought” drives “never-before-seen wildfire situation in Texas”

High Water: Aussie inland tsunami labelled 1-in-370 year event
April 19, 2011

“This is a situation of historic proportions,” said Victoria Koenig, public information officer with the Texas Forest Service, in a phone interview with AccuWeather.com Tuesday. “The fuels are so dry. The winds are astronomical. The behavior of the winds is a perplexing situation. It’s never been like this before.”

Koenig added, “When you put all the ingredients together, you’re getting close to having the ‘perfect fire storm‘.”

That’s Accuweather meteorologist Heather Buchman writing about “a never-before-seen wildfire situation in Texas has led to the scorching of nearly 1 million acres and destruction of hundreds of homes and buildings.

As record drought hits Texas, Congressional delegation votes to deny climate change

Our guest blogger is Nick Sundt, Director of Climate Change Communications at the World Wildlife Fund, and a longtime forest firefighter.

Last Thursday, all but one of the Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas voted for H.R. 910 to reverse the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding that greenhouse gas pollution threatens the health and welfare of Americans with a wide range of impacts, including more frequent and severe droughts and wildfires. One Texas Republican (Rep. Michael Burgess) abstained and one Texas Democrat (Rep. Henry Cuellar) also supported the measure. The measure passed the House (255 Ayes, 172 Nays), with no Republicans voting against it. 19 Democrats also voted in favor of the legislation.

The vote came immediately after Texas experienced its driest March on record, and as nearly 98 percent of the state is experiencing drought conditions. This includes 60 percent that is experiencing “severe” drought and 5 percent experiencing “exceptional” drought, the most extreme category. The National Drought Summary from the National Drought Mitigation Center on April 5th reports:


The first USDA soil moisture reports are out and they don’t paint a prettypicture, with 86% of Oklahoma showing short or very short topsoil moisture conditions. Texas is reporting 90% short/very short as well. Other statistics provided by the National Weather Service (Austin/San Antonio WFO) show that Del Rio has reported only 0.31 inches of precipitation for October-March, the 2nd driest since 1906. Austin reported its 5th driest October-March since 1856 and San Antonio came in as the 12th driest October-March since 1871.

[GliderGuider]

16. +1 Thanks for posting that.

It's all too easy for internet-denizens to get caught up in the abstract and forget to investigate what's actually happening out in the real world.

[kentauros]

22. You're welcome.

I'd be curious to see a graph of the temperature data in this area, to see what the trends have been over at least the last 15 years, and further back as needed.

I'm really tired of this drought, and I hate seeing what it's doing to my state. It's not just the fires, but also how it affects the aquifers. I know the Edwards Aquifer's recharge zone is in Central Texas, and it's one of the largest aquifers in the state. No rain, no recharging. People and businesses will continue to access it, so the level keeps going down. I don't think it will dry up, but things will get to the point where adequate amounts of water will be unreachable. Maybe my field of pipeline mapping will by then be in the realm of freshwater pipelines from desalination plants...

[Nederland]

17. Wait, now I'm confused

Is the OP about climate change or is it not? In posts #9 and post #11 I was taken to task for assuming that the OP had something to do with climate change. Then you insist that it does in fact have something to do with climate change, and GG, the author of post #9, thanks you. Can you guys get together and come up with a consistent narrative here?

[kentauros]

19. I think you either skimmed this part of the OP,

or didn't see it at all:

The state began the winter dry season with abundant vegetation, following a moist spring in 2010. But then drought settled over the state in late 2010 and early 2011, culminating in the driest March on record. Many areas received less than 5 percent of their normal rainfall, according to the state climatologist.

In addition to being dry, March and April were warmer than normal. The top image shows ground temperatures for April 7 to April 14 compared to long-term average for the week. The red tones indicate that most of Texas was much warmer than average, further drying out the abundant grasses, shrubs, and trees already suffering from a lack of rain.

Additionally, in your own post #5 you do bring up the idea that this is about climate change.

My point is that the OP is utter bullshit if it is trying to make some point about climate change. What the April anomaly is in Texas has absolutely ZERO relevance to the subject climate change. Now perhaps the poster just felt like telling what the weather in Texas has been like these past few weeks, but something tells me s/he had something else in mind.

Please note in my second sentence to you that this is not an anomaly. This have been going on (and building) for fifteen years. How can you seriously call that an anomaly?

If you reread your own posts as well as reading the OP thoroughly, you shouldn't be confused ;)

[Nederland]

20. Fifteen years?

Where did you get that from? It may be true, but it certainly is not in the article. Even if it were, it means nothing. Texas is only one spot on the globe, and climate change is a global phenomena. The only thing that can prove that climate change is as bad as the alarmists say it is to show global long term trends, not a map of temperature anomaly numbers from a single week in April for one particular spot.

I haven't seen you here before so I think its worth explaining my views on climate change so you don't confuse me with full blown skeptic. I'm what you call a lukewarmer, which means that while I agree that the world is getting warmer and that CO2 is a major cause, I question whether the magnitude of that warming will be as large as the alarmists claim. Certainly the temperature trends for the last thirty years are small enough to make that a reasonable position to hold from a scientific standpoint.

[kentauros]

21. I figured my statement of being a native to this area of the world

was enough for anyone to accept my statement of the drought having been going on for the last fifteen years through direct experience. As it's not enough for you, and you didn't look any deeper into that climate change site, here's a link from March 20, that places the beginning of our drought at around 1995-1996:

Population flight from growing desert of central Texas

Also, I was not aware that the temperature imagery on the map above stopped at the Texas borders. I could clearly see similar hot-spots in northern Mexico, Oklahoma and New Mexico. Or are you assuming I only see such data in the same way that weather forecasters only show weather entering and leaving at the borders to a state or country? Ever noticed that absurdity? ;)

Again, I live here in Texas, have all my life, and this has been going on for over a third of my life. And it's getting slowly worse. That, to me, is climate change, and no matter your definition of it, isn't required to be global to still be designated as such. We've seen how simple things like too much concrete and asphalt can change a local climate in a city. It may not seem significant in the big picture, but it is to the local climate. It is just one small part of the whole, an effect of the whole.

As for me seeming to be invisible to you, I do post here, just infrequently. This happened to be a subject that directly affects me and my own, so I posted additional information on it, where it appeared it was needed to educate further. I didn't realized one needed to post to a forum quite often to be "recognized" by the regulars. And I've seen your posts. It doesn't matter to me what your normal stance is. I only saw a lack of knowledge on your part and felt the need to add to it. And I am far from an alarmist. I am merely concerned with what I am witnessing happening to the state I love and call home. I'd say these wildfires and the changes to our climate over the whole area (this state, Mexico, Oklahoma, New Mexico) are a strong indicator that the climate is changing in this particular part of the world. How much more information do you need to accept that?

[Nederland]

23. Do you honestly think that is relevant...

...that Texas has been in a drought for the last fifteen years? I guarantee you that at for any given year in the last 10,000 years you can find a few spots on the planet that have been experiencing a drought for the previous fifteen years. I'm very sorry that right now you happen to be living in one of them, but please don't make the mistake of thinking it proves anything regarding climate change. It simply doesn't.

[kentauros]

24. If it says something significant to climate scientists,

then to me, that's enough to say it "proves something" regarding climate change. I'm sorry you can't see, or worse, accept that. I may not be a climate scientist, but I'm not getting the impression that you are, either. So, your opinion on this is of no more significance to anyone than mine. And yet, you're the only one complaining about mine ;)

[Nederland]

25. It doesn't say anything significant to climate scientists (nt)

[pscot]

12. One swallow doth not a summer make

The moving average is still well above the 30 year average. This has been a cool year, but it hasn't broken the trend line.

[BrightKnight]

26. We need more coal power plants

to keep my air conditioner running.