In case you missed them, stories on climate change and drought, starting with the most important announcement for Texans:
Study: Triple-Digit Summers to be the NormTexas will be hotter and its summers will average triple-digit
temperatures within a few decades, according to a study by the state
climatologist.
John Nielsen-Gammon, who also is a professor of
atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, said results of the
study present a chilling outlook: Maximum temperatures could be up to
five degrees higher by 2060.
San Antonio's average maximum
temperature in August was 98 degrees this year. If Nielsen-Gammon's
projections hold true, average maximum temperatures would be as high as
103 degrees in August 2060.
“The unusually warm summers in parts
of Texas in 2009 and 2010 were a taste of the future,” he said in a
statement. “They are likely to be the typical summers of midcentury, and
the unusually hot summers will be that much hotter.”
Nielsen-Gammon
said the projections show temperatures would increase as much as one
degree each decade if the upper end of climate models are correct.
The
climatologist concluded — after combining model analyses from the
National Center for Atmospheric Research with climate observations from
the National Climatic Data Center — that the trend toward warmer
temperatures began decades ago.
“The decade of the 1970s was the
coldest period in recorded climate history for Texas,” he said. “Since
then, temperatures have been rising decade by decade, and the models
project a similar warming trend for the foreseeable future.”
His
findings are part of the second edition of the book “The Impact of
Global Warming on Texas,” for which he wrote a chapter and which is to
be printed early next year.
Prior studies show that as
temperatures rise, a variety of problems emerge, such as water
shortages, more crop failures, longer and more severe droughts and
greater difficulty in controlling air pollution.
