U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years
scientificamerican.com
U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years
1–10 of 105 posts
Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years
#2Optimizing crop outputs for higher-than-average temperatures and minimal rain is very important. Agricultural innovation over the next 10-20 years is going to be fast-paced; it'll have to be, to keep up with local climate changes.
I work in weather prediction and hope to improve weather forecasts for agribusiness. But what if our forecast ends up just being "Hot; no rain.". What will happen, where will the water come from? Will the US import vastly more food than it does now? Will we build water pipelines down from Canada?
Will there be rogue geoengineering projects to try to make it rain? Will there be official projects? Will the US and everyone else stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere?
So many questions.
Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years
#3Optimizing crop outputs for higher-than-average temperatures and minimal rain is very important. Agricultural innovation over the next 10-20 years is going to be fast-paced; it'll have to be, to keep up with local climate changes. I work in weather prediction and hope to improve weather forecasts for agribusiness. But what if our forecast ends up just being "Hot; no rain.". What will happen, where will the water come…
The US produces several times more food than we need.
A single acre can easily produce enough food for a small family and we have 408 million acres under cultivation. Corn is something of a super star at 8,250 lb. of corn per acre. However, we end up feeding most of this to animals which drastically reduces overall efficiency.
So, sure we are going to spend a lot of effort maximizing food production. But a 50% drop in the food supply over a few years would not be that big of an issue with a small increase in grain prices and a significant bump in meat costs.
Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years
#4Optimizing crop outputs for higher-than-average temperatures and minimal rain is very important. Agricultural innovation over the next 10-20 years is going to be fast-paced; it'll have to be, to keep up with local climate changes. I work in weather prediction and hope to improve weather forecasts for agribusiness. But what if our forecast ends up just being "Hot; no rain.". What will happen, where will the water come…
Do you happen to know if there are there realistic risks of permanent desertification of the great plains? (like what happened to the sahara) Or does that involve changes of a more dramatic sort than 'less rain'?
Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years
#5Optimizing crop outputs for higher-than-average temperatures and minimal rain is very important. Agricultural innovation over the next 10-20 years is going to be fast-paced; it'll have to be, to keep up with local climate changes. I work in weather prediction and hope to improve weather forecasts for agribusiness. But what if our forecast ends up just being "Hot; no rain.". What will happen, where will the water come…
Do you happen to know if there are there realistic risks of permanent desertification of the great plains? (like what happened to the sahara) Or does that involve changes of a more dramatic sort than 'less rain'?
That was what was happening in during the dust bowl. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl In the end we solved the problem mostly though trees (wind breaks) and a lot of geologic water. But long term some large scale irrigation can also solve the problem.
PS: There are also farming methods that mitigate the issue while using far less water (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dryland_farming), but they are still not nearly as common as they should be.
Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years
#6I am greatly encouraged by operations such as this one: http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/archives/2014/0227/upsta... which is pushing aquaponics. A lot less net water use and plenty of food.
Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years
#7I am greatly encouraged by operations such as this one: http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/archives/2014/0227/upsta... which is pushing aquaponics. A lot less net water use and plenty of food.
The downside being its not scalable. You need an entirely artificial setup to get aquaponics up and running, motors, pipes, and chemical cleaning. Don't get me wrong aquaponics is a great technology, I think it needs some changes in order to make it feasible for the large scale.
Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years
#8Optimizing crop outputs for higher-than-average temperatures and minimal rain is very important. Agricultural innovation over the next 10-20 years is going to be fast-paced; it'll have to be, to keep up with local climate changes. I work in weather prediction and hope to improve weather forecasts for agribusiness. But what if our forecast ends up just being "Hot; no rain.". What will happen, where will the water come…
>I work in weather prediction and hope to improve weather forecasts for agribusiness. But what if our forecast ends up just being "Hot; no rain."
Um, there is quite a difference between weather forecasting and climate forecasting. The linked article deals with conditions in the second half of the century.
Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years
#9Optimizing crop outputs for higher-than-average temperatures and minimal rain is very important. Agricultural innovation over the next 10-20 years is going to be fast-paced; it'll have to be, to keep up with local climate changes. I work in weather prediction and hope to improve weather forecasts for agribusiness. But what if our forecast ends up just being "Hot; no rain.". What will happen, where will the water come…
The US produces several times more food than we need. A single acre can easily produce enough food for a small family and we have 408 million acres under cultivation. Corn is something of a super star at 8,250 lb. of corn per acre. However, we end up feeding most of this to animals which drastically reduces overall efficiency. So, sure we are going to spend a lot of effort maximizing food production. But a 50% drop i…
Increasing the productivity of farms reduces their impact on the environment, too, so there's a powerful incentive to maximize productivity even if we're overproducing.
Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years
#10Optimizing crop outputs for higher-than-average temperatures and minimal rain is very important. Agricultural innovation over the next 10-20 years is going to be fast-paced; it'll have to be, to keep up with local climate changes. I work in weather prediction and hope to improve weather forecasts for agribusiness. But what if our forecast ends up just being "Hot; no rain.". What will happen, where will the water come…
this is likely not a CO2 issue. If anything everything grows better in a higher CO2 environment, let alone a warmer one. We can see this from when it happened before.
Trying to go through the NA Drought Atlas, curious if there are other geological events they can tie some of the really severe past droughts too. If anything their document simply states that severe droughts are a matter of record and its possible that current climate issues attributed to man by some may exaggerate the effect of subsequent droughts; frankly as far as I am concerned it can go either way because some past droughts were incredible and in no way affected by man though they did a number on a nontech world