Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:

Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:

This Week’s Drought Summary

An upper-level ridge over the northeastern North Pacific Ocean deflected Pacific storm systems away from the West Coast of the contiguous U.S. (CONUS) during this U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) week (February 15-21). This resulted in a generally drier-than-normal week over much of the West. An upper-level trough developed over the western CONUS downstream from the ridge, and the trough was responsible for a cooler-than-normal week over the West. Strong high pressure over the Gulf of Mexico extended into a ridge across the East Coast. A southerly flow between the trough and eastern ridge spread warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico across the eastern CONUS and directed weather systems northeastward from the southern Plains to Great Lakes. Two weather systems early in the week generated above-normal precipitation across parts of the central to eastern CONUS. As the week ended, weather systems moved across the northern tier states, bringing areas of snow. The week was wetter than normal across parts of the northern Rockies, from the Four Corners states to western Great Lakes, and from the central Gulf Coast states to Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic states. It was a drier-than-normal week across much of the West, southern Plains, coastal Southeast, and southern Great Lakes to New England, and parts of the northern to central Plains. Drought or abnormal dryness expanded where it continued dry in parts of the Pacific Northwest, southern Plains, and Florida. Drought or abnormal dryness contracted or reduced in intensity where it was wet over parts of the Four Corners area, southern and central Plains to Upper Mississippi Valley, and the Big Island in Hawaii…

High Plains

A storm system tracked across southern parts of the High Plains region early in the week, with another late in the week tracking across northern Wyoming. Weekly precipitation totals were half an inch to over an inch in parts of Wyoming, Colorado, northern and eastern Kansas, southern and eastern Nebraska, and southeast South Dakota. The rest of the region received little to no precipitation. Moderate to exceptional drought was trimmed in a few areas of northwestern and eastern Kansas, and adjacent parts of Nebraska, while abnormal dryness and severe drought were trimmed in southern Colorado. No change was made to the drought areas in the rest of the region…

West

Half an inch of precipitation fell over a few areas in the Four Corners states and in western Oregon, while 2 inches or more of precipitation occurred over parts of the Washington Cascades and northern Rockies. But for the most part, little to no precipitation fell across large parts of the West region. Abnormal dryness and moderate to severe drought were trimmed in northwest New Mexico where this week was wet and moist conditions were evident in soil moisture, snowpack, and Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) indicators. But low streamflow, snowpack, soil moisture, and SPI values prompted expansion of abnormal dryness and moderate drought along coastal Oregon and southwest Washington, as well as in the Idaho panhandle. While many reservoirs in California have recovered from the recent atmospheric river events that have struck that state, reservoirs in Oregon continue at drastically low levels and some reservoirs in Utah remain at low levels. As of February 21, 2023, the water level in Lake Powell was 3521.53 feet above sea level, which is the lowest level recorded since the lake was filled in the 1960s. As noted by the media, Lake Powell is a man-made reservoir that sits along the Colorado River on the Arizona-Utah border. It generates electricity for about 4.5 million people and is a key part of the Colorado River Basin system, which supplies water to more than 40 million people. Further north, an extension agent in Blaine County, Montana, reported the drought is causing reduced water for irrigation, later emergence of spring grasses, and grazing must be supplemented and water hauled for livestock…

South

Two inches or more of precipitation fell across eastern portions of the South region, specifically parts of Mississippi and much of Tennessee. Half an inch or more occurred from there to eastern Oklahoma and northeast Texas. For the rest of Oklahoma and Texas, the week continued a dry pattern. Abnormal dryness and moderate to extreme drought contracted in eastern Oklahoma, due to wet conditions this week and previous weeks and improved soil moisture and streamflow conditions, and abnormal dryness contracted in northeast Texas. But extreme to exceptional drought expanded in western Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle, while abnormal dryness and moderate to severe drought expanded in parts of southern Texas along the coast and along the Rio Grande River where streamflow and soil moisture conditions deteriorated and precipitation deficits continued to grow. According to media reports, 80-mph winds created a dust storm in the Oklahoma panhandle that caused a multiple car pileup, killing a driver…

Looking Ahead

A strong Pacific weather system moved across the West on February 22, with a low pressure and frontal system spreading rain and snow from the Plains to Mississippi Valley and across northern states. A series of weather systems will follow during February 23-28, spreading an inch or more of precipitation from Oklahoma to the Great Lakes, from the Tennessee to Ohio Valleys, and across much of the Northeast, as well as along the West Coast and into the interior West. Some precipitation totals will exceed 2 inches in the Upper Mississippi Valley and western Great Lakes, and exceed 4 inches along coastal Washington and California and into the Sierra Nevada range. The Gulf of Mexico Coast, western parts of the Great Plains, and parts of the Mid-Atlantic Coast will see little to no precipitation. High pressure over the Gulf of Mexico will keep temperatures warmer than normal from the southern Plains to Ohio Valley and Gulf Coast to Mid-Atlantic Coast, while temperatures will be cooler than normal across the Far West to northern Plains. For February 28-March 8, the outlook favors colder-than-normal weather across the West and Alaska, with warmer-than-normal weather from the southern Plains to Atlantic Coast and Great Lakes. Above-normal precipitation is likely across Alaska, the western CONUS, and much of the CONUS east of the Rockies except along the Gulf Coast where below-normal precipitation is favored.

Click the link to access the paper on the AGU website (John C. Hammond, Graham A. Sexstone, Annie L. Putman, Theodore B. Barnhart, David M. Rey, Jessica M. Driscoll, Glen E. Liston, Kristen L. Rasmussen, Daniel McGrath, Steven R. Fassnacht, Stephanie K. Kampf). Here’s the abstract and plain language summery:

Continued climate warming is reducing seasonal snowpacks in the western United States, where >50% of historical water supplies were snowmelt-derived. In the Upper Colorado River Basin, declining snow water equivalent (SWE) and altered surface water input (SWI, rainfall and snowmelt available to enter the soil) timing and magnitude affect streamflow generation and water availability. To adapt effectively to future conditions, we need to understand current spatiotemporal distributions of SWE and SWI and how they may change in future decades. We developed 100-m SnowModel simulations for water years 2001–2013 and two scenarios: control (CTL) and pseudo-global-warming (PGW). The PGW fraction of precipitation falling as snow was lower relative to CTL, except for November–April at high elevations. PGW peak SWE was lower for low (−45%) and mid elevations (−14%), while the date of peak SWE was uniformly earlier in the year for all elevations (17–23 days). Currently unmonitored high elevation snow represented a greater fraction of total PGW SWE. PGW peak daily SWI was higher for all elevations (30%–42%), while the dates of SWI peaks and centroids were earlier in the year for all elevations under PGW. PGW displayed elevated winter SWI, lower summer SWI, and changes in spring SWI timing were elevation-dependent. Although PGW peak SWI was elevated and earlier compared to CTL, SWI was more evenly distributed throughout the year for PGW. These simulated shifts in the timing and magnitude of SWE and SWI have broad implications for water management in dry, snow-dominated regions.

Key Points

• Projections show lower peak snow water equivalent (SWE) below 3,000 m and earlier peak SWE, peak surface water input (SWI) at all elevations
• Greater future peak SWI and reduced annual snow-derived SWI for all elevations, with a more even SWI distribution throughout the year
• A greater fraction of future SWE will be in high elevations that are currently unmonitored

Plain Language Summary

Snowpack water storage has historically functioned as a reliable extension of manmade reservoir storage. Loss of this storage has consequences for water resource management, ecological communities, and natural hazards including wildfire. We modeled snow accumulation and melt at high spatial resolution in the Upper Colorado River Basin to assess patterns in the timing and magnitude of snow storage and snowmelt for historical and future scenarios. We analyze these patterns in relation to existing snow monitoring station coverage, and ask how this coverage may need to change in future decades to better represent water availability. Our results indicate widespread future snow storage losses at lower elevations, but limited change at higher elevations that will likely remain conducive to seasonal snow accumulation and melt for decades to come. Peak snow storage and peak snowmelt occurred earlier for all elevations in future years, with increased peak surface water input noted at all elevations. A greater fraction of future snow storage will be in currently unmonitored high elevations. Projected elevation dependent changes from this study have implications for other dry, snow dominated regions, and additional work is needed to evaluate combined effects of widespread snow loss and earlier, flashier input on coordinated water management.

Click the link to read the post on the NOAA website (Emily Becker):

La Niña—the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation climate pattern—weakened over the past month, and forecasters expect a transition to neutral conditions in the next couple of months. We’ll check in with the tropical Pacific to see how things are going before continuing the journey into understanding winter daily temperature variability that I started in December’s post.

Current events

The sea surface temperature in the Niño-3.4 region in the tropical Pacific came in at 0.75 °C (1.4 ˚F) cooler than the long-term average in January according to ERSSTv5, our most consistent historical dataset.

This is the second month in a row with that the Niño-3.4 anomaly (anomaly = ”difference from the long-term average”) has weakened, but it still exceeds the La Niña threshold of -0.5 °C. The most recent weekly Niño-3.4 anomaly, which comes from the OISST dataset, was just at that threshold, measuring -0.5 °C. (Take a look at Tom’s post for more details on the various datasets we use to track temperatures in the Pacific.)

Weekly measurements tend to bounce around (weather!), while ENSO is a seasonal pattern (climate!). Therefore, we won’t declare La Niña is over the moment the weekly value crosses the threshold—we’ll wait to be sure that the monthly average anomaly is in the neutral range (between -0.5 °C and 0.5 °C). The last time neutral conditions were present was summer 2021.

The atmospheric response to La Niña’s cooler-than-average ocean surface is an amped-up Walker circulation: stronger trade winds, stronger westerly (west-to-east) winds high up in the atmosphere, more rain and clouds than average over the far western Pacific, and drier conditions over the east/central Pacific. All of these characteristics were evident through January, indicating that the atmosphere is still reflecting La Niña.

What’s next??

Okay, okay, so La Niña is still here. But forecasters expect that a change is imminent, with an 85% chance that the February–April period will be neutral. This is based on the consensus of our computer models and bolstered by some physical observations, including the weakening oceanic anomalies at the surface and subsurface.

The subsurface provides a source for the surface. If there were still a lot of cooler water under the surface, we might be more hesitant to conclude that the transition to neutral conditions would happen soon. But as the animation above shows, the cold pool is getting smaller.

But will the neutral conditions we expect for spring precede an El Niño?? Tell us what we really want to know! Currently, El Niño has odds of about 60% for next fall—and after three La Niña winters in a row, it might seem inevitable—but there are some factors that provide uncertainty. There’s our old friend, the spring predictability barrier. Forecasts made in the spring tend to have lower accuracy, at least in part because spring is a time of transition for ENSO (other possible factors are still being explored), making it harder for models to get a grip on what direction things are going.

Also, the wide range of potential outcomes from the models (shown below) tells us that there is still a lot of uncertainty.

Each line in that graph shows a possible scenario for next fall and winter. The scenarios begin to diverge for two main reasons: the differences in how each model simulates certain small-scale physical processes and, for a given model, the very-slightly-different starting input that accounts for the fact that we can never observe the current state of the climate system perfectly. The predictions span from strong El Niño to (gasp!) a 4^th-year La Niña. These extreme scenarios are unlikely, though, and the majority of the forecasts are in the neutral to moderate-El Niño range. More on climate models in this post.

In summary: La Niña is waning, and confidence is high that neutral conditions will be in place soon and will last through the spring and early summer. Chances for El Niño next fall are increasing, but we’ll have a better picture as we progress through and past the spring predictability barrier.

Daily temperature variability or bust!

To recap: over the last couple of posts, I’ve been looking into how ENSO affects the range of daily temperatures within a season. When it comes to ENSO impacts, we usually talk about the seasonal average temperature, but—as vividly illustrated by the two extreme cold-air outbreaks in the U.S. this winter—daily temperature is how we experience weather. So I examined the variability or range of daily temperature each winter over 1950–2020 and then checked if the range of variability was different in El Niño winters or La Niña winters compared to neutral winters. Details of my analysis are in the footnotes.

In December, I showed that the range of daily average temperature is wider during La Niña winters than during El Niño winters in nearly all of North America. The only geographic exceptions are the north-central region of the continent, Florida, and southern Mexico, all of which have lower variability during La Niña and higher variability during El Niño winters. 

Then, in January, I checked out the average range of daily minimum and maximumtemperatures. It turned out that there is a very wide range of daily minimum temperatures (usually the overnight low temperature) in the center of the continent, with less variability toward the coasts, especially the Southwest. Looking at daily maximums (usually the daytime high), we found that there was less variability overall than with the minimum, except for the subtropical regions.

Breaking down the patterns into ENSO phase, the first thing we can say is that El Niño and La Niña have approximately opposite effects on both daily maximum and daily minimum, much as they did on the average temperature variability I showed in December. Where El Niño reduces variability, La Niña increases it, and vice-versa.

However, things are a little noisier than those average daily patterns were. This is expected; any time you get into more granular data—whether you’re talking about area or time span—your results get noisier. (Another example of this is the weekly vs. monthly sea surface temperature I talked about above.) I’ll make a few quick observations about these maps but leave you to compare them for your hometown or other areas of interest.

Looking first at the maps for La Niña winters, we find that much of the U.S. and Alaska experience an increased range of daily lows. The pattern of La Niña’s impact on the daily high temperature range is somewhat different, with variability decreasing in the northern half of the U.S. and increasing in the Southeast. However, there are some regions where both daily highs and daily lows change the same way during La Niña winters (increased range in the Southeast and in Alaska).

During El Niño, the range of daily low temperature is substantially reduced across most of the U.S. and Alaska. The range of daily highs, however, is slightly expanded or only slightly reduced over the U.S.

That’s all there’s space for this month. What ideas do you have for why these patterns vary the way they do? Let us know in the comments! Then next month, I’ll wrap things up with some explanations and thoughts about ENSO’s impact on daily temperature. Until then, stay cozy!

Footnote

Details on the analysis:

• The maps show the standard deviation of daily maximum or minimum temperature for each winter averaged over all winters 1950–2020 and the averages for La Niña and El Niño winters, as determined by the Oceanic Niño Index.
• Daily temperature data: I used Berkeley Earth daily average temperature dataset. It’s also available here.
• Years included: 1950–2020. Berkeley Earth is available through near-present, but the data I downloaded ended in 2020. I’ll update with 2021–2022, but I don’t expect the overall results to change.
• Programming language: I used Python. Jupyter notebooks available upon request.

Click the link to read the release on the University of Montana website:

MISSOULA – More than three times as many houses and other structures burned in Western wildfires from 2010 to 2020 than in the previous decade, and that wasn’t only because more acreage burned, according to a new analysis from the University of Montana and its partners.

Human ignitions started 76% of the wildfires that destroyed structures, and those fires tended to be in flammable areas where homes, commercial structures and outbuildings are increasingly common.

“Humans are driving the negative impacts from wildfire,” said lead author Philip Higuera, a UM fire ecologist and professor, who wrote the assessment during a sabbatical at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Human fingerprints are all over this. We influence the when, the where and the why.”

Most measures of wildfire’s impact – for example, expansion of wildfire season into new months and the number of structures in flammable vegetation – are going in the wrong direction, Higuera said. But the new finding, published Feb. 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences-Nexus, also means that human action can lessen the risks of wildfire damage.

“We have levers,” he said. “As climate change makes vegetation more flammable, we advise carefully considering if and how we build in flammable vegetation, for example.”

During Higuera’s visiting fellowship at CIRES, he worked with several researchers to dig into the details of 15,001 Western wildfires between 1999 and 2020.

Burned area increased 30% across the West, the team found, but structure loss increased much more, by nearly 250%. Many factors contributed, including climate change, our tendency to build more homes in flammable ecosystems and a history of suppressing wildfire.

Ph.D. student Maxwell Cook, a co-author from CIRES/CU Boulder, said the forcible removal of Indigenous people from landscapes played a role by all-but-eliminating intentional burning, which can lessen the risk of more destructive fires.

“Prescribed fire is an incredibly important tool, and we have a lot to learn about how people have been using fire for centuries,” Cook said.

In the new assessment, the team found some horrible years for wildfires. Sixty-two percent of all structures lost in those two decades were lost in just three years: 2017, 2018 and 2020, Cook said.

And some states had it much worse than others. California, for example, accounted for more than 77% of all 85,014 structures destroyed during 1999-2020.

Across the West, 1.3 structures were destroyed for every 1,000 hectares of land scorched by wildfire between 1999 and 2009. Between 2010 and 2020, that ratio increased to 3.4.

Importantly, Higuera and his colleagues also found variability among states in how much burning occurred and how many structures were lost in wildfires. Montana sees less structure loss relative to the West as a whole, and most burning is from lightning ignitions. California, on the other hand, sees high losses from wildfires and burns much more overall.

The paper concluded that all states could benefit from policies that address human-related ignitions, especially during late summer and fall and near developments, as well as policies that address fire-resistant building materials and consideration of nearby vegetation.

Finally, the authors said climate change mitigation is also essential. Longer fire seasons – a result of climate change – mean that human-related ignitions are more consequential, leading to more destructive wildfires in the fall and early winter when they were once rare.

The article, “Shifting social-ecological fire regimes explain increasing structure loss from Western wildfires,” was co-authored by Higuera, Cook, Jennifer Balch, Natasha Stavros and Lise St. Dennis from CIRES Earth Lab, as well as Adam Mahood, now an ecologist with the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Fort Collins.

###

Note: Higuera and co-authors published a companion article in the Conversation on Feb. 1 titled “Western wildfires destroyed 246% more homes and buildings over past decade – fire scientists explain what’s changing.”

Contact: Philip Higuera, UM professor of fire ecology, philip.higuera@umontana.edu; Maxwell Cook, CU Boulder doctoral student, maxwell.cook@colorado.edu.

Read the CU Bolder news release about this topic.

Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.

Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:\

This Week’s Drought Summary

An active weather week over much of the South, Southeast and portions of the Midwest allowed many locations in eastern Oklahoma, northern Arkansas, central Mississippi, northern Florida, southern Georgia and into coastal areas of South Carolina to record above-normal precipitation. Dry conditions dominated the West and northern Plains. Temperatures were well above normal in the northern Plains and upper Midwest, with departures of 15-20 degrees above normal. Most areas east of the Missouri River were above normal for the week with departures of 5-15 degrees above normal common. Cooler-than-normal temperatures dominated the intermountain West and into the Four Corners region where temperatures were 5-10 degrees below normal for the week…

High Plains

Temperatures for the week were warmest over the eastern and northern extent of the region with departures 10-15 degrees above normal while the western areas were 5-10 degrees below normal in portions of Wyoming and Colorado. Most of the region was dry this week with the exception of eastern Kansas where over 200% of normal precipitation was recorded for the week. As temperatures warmed up and the benefits of the snowpack over portions of southern South Dakota and northern Nebraska started to be observed, improvements were made this week to the drought intensity levels along the South Dakota and Nebraska borders. A full category improvement was also made to conditions in eastern Kansas where more moderate drought was eliminated and improvements to severe and extreme drought were made in southeast portions of the state. Some slight degradation was introduced in Wyoming where severe drought was expanded in the east and southwest portions of the state…

West

Cooler-than-normal temperatures dominated most of the region outside of Montana where temperatures were 15-20 degrees above normal for the week. Most of the region was dry with only portions of New Mexico, southern Colorado, southern Montana and portions of the Pacific Northwest recording above-normal precipitation. Snowpack over the region remains well above normal. With the continued wet pattern over the Southwest, portions of Arizona and New Mexico were improved this week with moderate drought and abnormally dry conditions reduced in both states. Drier conditions in Washington allowed for some expansion of abnormally dry conditions while a reassessment of the extreme drought in northwest Nevada determined that conditions had improved enough to remove all of the extreme drought in this region…

South

Precipitation was widespread throughout most of eastern Oklahoma, northern Texas, northern Arkansas and portions of southern Louisiana with most of these areas recording 150-200% of normal precipitation for the week. Temperatures were warmest in the eastern extent where Arkansas and Louisiana were 4-6 degrees above normal while most of Oklahoma and Texas were 2-4 degrees below normal. The recent wetter pattern allowed for most of eastern Oklahoma to observe a full category improvement to the drought intensities with abnormally dry conditions removed from the eastern extent and some exceptional drought improved as well. Areas of eastern Texas had improvements made to moderate drought and abnormally dry conditions but saw degradations, mainly on long-term indicators highlighting the changes over portions of the panhandle, central and south Texas…

Looking Ahead

Over the next 5-7 days, a storm system will track out of the Four Corners region and onto the Plains, bringing with it widespread precipitation from Colorado, through the Plains and into the Midwest. Widespread precipitation is also expected throughout the South and into the Mid-Atlantic where up to 2-3 inches of rain is anticipated. Much of the southern and northern Plains as well as the West will be dry during this time. Temperatures are expected to be above normal over much of the southern Plains, Midwest and eastward with departures of 8-10 degrees above normal. Cooler-than-normal temperatures are expected over the central to northern Plains, and over the West where departures of up to 15 degrees below normal will be expected over Wyoming.

The 6–10 day outlooks show above-normal chances of below-normal temperatures over the northern Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest and much of the West. The best chances of above-normal temperatures will be over the Southeast and through much of the South and Mid-Atlantic. Most of the country is showing above-normal chances of recording above-normal precipitation with the best chances over the Great Basin and in the Mid-Atlantic. South Texas and the peninsula of Florida are still showing a better likelihood of below-normal precipitation.

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Newsline website (Allison Winter):

The top 10% of recipients of federal farm payments raked in more than 79% of total subsidies over the last 25 years — producing billions of dollars for a relatively small group of U.S. producers, according to a new analysis of federal data from an environmental group.

In total, the federal government paid more than $478 billion from 2015 to 2021 in farm support for crop insurance, disasters, conservation payments and subsidies for certain crops like corn and soybeans, according to the analysis of federal data the Environmental Working Group released Wednesday [February 1, 2023]. 

The U.S. Agriculture Department programs support hundreds of thousands of producers across the country. But a select group of super collectors is bringing in an outsized portion of farm subsidies. 

The top 1% collected 27% of total subsidies between 1995 and 2021, according to the report.  

Some of the farm payments are more opaque. The government does not release information on all of the individuals who receive support for crop insurance. And the Trump administration changed how it reported some farm subsidies, so it lists them by banks instead of individuals, making it harder to see who received some of the payments from 2019 to 2021. 

More than half of farm subsidies over the last 25 years were commodity payments to crops like corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and rice, according to the EWG database. 

“Based on what we do know, we can still see the most successful farm businesses are still collecting the lion’s share of subsidies … while the vast majority of farmers are getting little or nothing,” said Scott Faber, vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, an independent nonprofit that conducts extensive research. 

The biggest of those were corn subsidies. 

Federal spending on crop insurance has grown in recent farm bills, and crop insurance payments now make up a quarter of all subsidy payments.

In Iowa, the family farm that is managed by the son of Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a farm policy leader, received more than $1.4 million from 1995 to 2021, the report shows. The payments included disaster, corn, soybean and oat commodity subsidies. 

The payments are listed for Robin Grassley, the family farm manager. Chuck Grassley and Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa both sit on the Senate Agriculture Committee. 

Pat Grassley, a state representative in Iowa and the senator’s grandson, collected $55,500 in federal payments since 2005. Most of those were relatively small commodity payments from $700 to $2,000 a year — with the exception of 2020, when he received $20,000.

The database compiles data collected from federal reporting and Freedom of Information Act requests.

Harvesting federal support

The distribution of farm subsidies does not necessarily follow the amount of agricultural production in a state. 

For instance, California is the most agriculture-producing state, according to the USDA, but is 11th on the list for subsidy payments. 

North Carolina is in the top 10 for agriculture production but ranks 20th for farm subsidy receipts. Instead, more money goes to Texas, Iowa and Illinois, where large farms grow subsidized commodity crops, like corn and soybeans.

The top 15 states with the most total farm subsidies distributed from 1995 to 2021, ranked by payments, were: 

1. Texas ($44.5 billion) 
2. Iowa ($39. 6 billion)
3. Illinois ($32.7 billion)
4. Minnesota ($28.1 billion)
5. Kansas ($27.7 billion) 
6. Nebraska ($27 billion)
7. North Dakota ($26.6 billion)
8. South Dakota ($21 billion)
9. Missouri ($17.4 billion)
10. Indiana ($16.5 billion)
11. California ($16.3 billion)
12. Arkansas ($15.9 billion) 
13. Ohio ($12.8 billion)
14. Wisconsin ($11.7 billion)
15. Oklahoma ($11.5 billion). 

Colorado came in 19th, with $8.7 billion in subsidies from 1995-2021. Most of that money went to counties on the state’s Eastern Plains, with the most — $906 million — going to Kit Carson County.

Pennsylvania, a major agricultural state, is 29th on the list with $3.4 billion from 1995-2021. The biggest subsidy programs in the state are for dairy farmers. 

But 80% of Pennsylvania’s producers do not receive federal farm subsidies, according to the report. 

Producers in House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson’s congressional district in Pennsylvania received nearly $35 million in commodity payment support from 1995 to 2021, according to the database. The largest of those went to Long Acres Potato Farms in Tionesta, which collected more than $1.5 million over that time period. 

Farm bill debate launches

The report comes as Congress kicks off its rewrite of the sweeping federal farm bill, which will set both policy and funding levels for farm, food and conservation programs for the next five years. The Senate Agriculture Committee held its first farm bill hearing of the year Wednesday. The current farm bill expires at the end of September.

Originally a product of the New Deal, the first farm bill in 1933 focused on commodity price support to provide relief for farmers and ensure a steady domestic food supply for Americans during the Great Depression. 

Since then, lawmakers have passed 18 farm bills and greatly expanded the reach of the legislation. 

For example, Congress added a conservation section to the farm bill in 1985 with payments for farmers who conserve soil, idle land for wildlife habitat or employ certain conservation practices. 

But the biggest spending in recent farm bills is not on farms at all but in the nutrition title, which includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. 

The politically fraught process of authoring a new farm bill faces extra challenges this year from a divided Congress, a looming debate over the federal debt ceiling and the potential for extended amendments in the House. 

The leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees, Thompson and Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, have each said they will aim to finish a new farm bill on time but acknowledged it will be a challenge this year.  

“We know because of the timeline and all of the complexity of everything going on and the challenges in the House that it may take a little bit longer, but we’re committed to getting it done,” Stabenow said in a January interview on the web broadcast Agri-Pulse newsmakers.

Crop subsidies could face attacks

Crop subsidies come under fire in every farm bill debate — both from environmental groups that would like to see the money invested elsewhere and budget hawks who want to trim federal spending. 

The Republican Study Committee, whose members make up 80% of all Republican members of Congress, proposed drastic cuts for the farm bill and limits on some farm subsidies in the draft budget it released last summer as a “Blueprint to Save America.”  

But Agriculture Committee leaders have not indicated they intend to undertake any massive overhaul in this farm bill.

Thompson has said he does not want to dismantle farm supports, which he and other farm state lawmakers see as a safety net critical for producers and rural communities. 

Democrats on his committee have not shown enthusiasm for an overhaul of farm subsidies, either. 

In a recent list of farm bill priorities, Georgia Rep. David Scott, the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, did not include changes for farm subsidies other than extending programs for livestock producers and  small farmers.

Georgia Republican Rep. Austin Scott, who will chair the subcommittee that oversees farm commodities, said at a farm bill listening session last month that he wants to look at the reference prices that trigger payments for row crops but has not expressed interest in a massive subsidy overhaul.

Click the link to read the article on the NOAA website (Sukyoung Lee, Kris Karnauskas, Ulla Heede, AND Michelle L’Heureus):

“How will climate change influence ENSO?” is one of the most common questions that we get on the ENSO Blog. While it makes sense folks want to know about the future changes in El Niño and La Niña—are they becoming more/less frequent? stronger? weaker? (1)—there is an even more basic question for future climate change that scientists are pondering:

How will trends in sea surface temperatures change across the equatorial Pacific Ocean? 

It is very likely that the equatorial Pacific Ocean is going to warm up somewhere, but where exactly the strongest warming occurs is an important question. In particular, scientists want to know more about the geographic pattern of trends (2). By modifying the heating in the tropics, these changes will then have knock-on influences across the globe because, as we like to say, what happens in the Pacific does not stay in the Pacific!

The trend pattern is critical to understanding how the average or background atmospheric circulation of the tropical Pacific will change. Remember: the background state of the atmosphere in the tropical Pacific—the Walker Circulation—is fueled by the difference in sea surface temperature between the west and the east.

If temperatures warm faster in the western Pacific than in the eastern Pacific, the background tropical circulation could become more La Niña-like (3). But if the trend pattern changes as global temperatures continue to rise, meaning the east starts warming faster than the west in the future, the whole circulation across the tropical Pacific could become more El Niño-like. So actual ENSO events would be occurring against a different background climate than they do today. Yeah, it’s complicated.

How the sea surface temperature trend pattern will change has profound, world-wide implications for impacts such as regional changes in rainfall, where drought occurs, numbers of tropical cyclones, the rate of global mean warming, ocean biogeochemistry, etc. If you are trying to make decisions based on projections of the future, you need to know the answer. And, at this moment, there is some significant (perhaps even growing) debate that surrounds it.

Some scientists believe the recently observed trends suggest the models may be not reproducing some key mechanisms that are critical to provide accurate projections for the tropical Pacific Ocean. There are some long-standing biases in how models simulate the tropical Pacific that we have covered before on this blog, which could be playing some role.

To help us better understand this question, we have assembled a panel of three experts: Professor Sukyoung Lee at the Pennsylvania State University, Professor Kris Karnauskasat the University of Colorado- Boulder (who has previously written on the ENSO blog), Dr. Ulla Heede who is now a CIRES postdoctoral visiting fellow, following her PhD with Alexey Fedorov at Yale University. Keep in mind that this is not a complete representation of all possible perspectives on the matter, and there are some angles not represented by this group (4).

Questions and Answers

(A) So, what are the trends in sea surface temperature (and other variables) across the tropical Pacific Ocean? Why can’t you just measure past trends and assume they will continue? What’s the problem here?

UH: Since at least 1980, the tropical Pacific warming pattern has become more La Niña-like in the observations. This means that SSTs are warming faster in the western tropical Pacific Ocean than the eastern Pacific, and that surface winds are blowing stronger from east-to-west along the equatorial Pacific Ocean (5). This is opposite to the El Niño-like trend many climate models are projecting into the future because of greenhouse gases. Right now, there is a vigorous debate in the climate community whether the La Niña-like trend we are observing now is being driven by greenhouse gases or has natural causes. Because natural variations in the ocean circulation are slow, it is difficult to estimate the signal of global warming in a short observational record.

KK: It might sound simple, but quantifying those trends in the past observed record is more challenging than you might think! This is because the tropical Pacific is home to ENSO, which can either hide the long-term trends with its large variability, or make trends appear that are just temporary and could change later on.

UH: There is another reason why we cannot simply assume the recently observed La Niña-like trend will continue in the future. Mainly, we don’t know with enough certainty what the trend was before we had satellites monitoring the vast expanse of the tropical Pacific Ocean.

KK: Ulla is right, we have a tougher time reliably estimating the trends prior to the satellite era (late 1970s), and this problem gets even worse prior to the 1950s. Back then the instrumental data (mostly from ships) have gaps and changes in measurement protocols. Think of it like this: ideally, we would like to estimate the trend using as long of a record as possible (going back to the 1800s) but this is hampered by gaps in space and time. With 40 years of satellite data, we can be more confident that we’re accurately measuring the whole tropics, but with that shorter record, it is harder to distinguish trends from just a random pileup of ENSO events.

(B) Why is it so important we know the pattern of tropical Pacific trends? Who cares?

UH: I’d like to rephrase this question another way: What are the climate impacts associated with the tropical Pacific climate change? (6) The short answer is: a lot! This is because the tropical Pacific plays a key role in distributing energy and moisture to the rest of the planet, so any change in the tropical Pacific will be felt in other parts of the world. Let’s look at an example: in the last several decades we have observed drought conditions in many parts of the southwestern United States. This is likely partially related to the stronger tropical Pacific winds (more La Niña-like trends) we have recently observed. So, if the trends in the tropical Pacific changes, we might also see a change in these drought conditions.

SL: During La Niña, the atmospheric circulation over the middle latitudes is unusually wavier in the east-west direction (7). Surface temperatures can also be more variable as this blog recently pointed out. This increased waviness can mean the Arctic tends to be unusually warm and a large area of the North American and Eurasian continents tend to be unusually cold (8). Conversely, during El Niño, the atmospheric circulation is less wavy and the mid-latitude continents tend to be unusually warm and the Arctic tends to be colder than average.

Because climate change might have similar effects, we really need to know how the tropical Pacific sea surface temperature pattern and latent heating [the heating of the atmosphere that occurs when water vapor condenses into rain or clouds] will change. If it becomes more La Niña-like, the likelihood of undesirable conditions such as an even drier southwest U.S., as Ulla mentioned, or an amplified cold continents/warm Arctic pattern, would increase (8). Because most of the population resides in the mid-latitude continents, this clearly has implications for energy and water usage planning.

(C) Why is this happening? Why are future projections more El Niño-like while observations are more La Niña-like? What would even cause more El Niño- vs. more La Niña-like changes?

KK: Perhaps we should not be that surprised that future projections and past observations do not always give the same answer. Future projections are from imperfect computer models, and past observations are from imperfect attempts to measure the vast ocean. The causes of these possible changes have been hotly debated for decades, and it was like “love at first sight” when I was introduced to it as a postdoc!

SL: One explanation is “internal variability,” which essentially suggests that natural causes explain the recent La Niña-like trend. However, recent work by Dr. Richard Seager (here and here), among others, suggests models are either deficient at correctly estimating this internal variability or the response to greenhouse gases may not be right. Either outcome raises some doubts on the future projections of the tropical Pacific made by the current generation of climate models. Thus, it is important to understand the mechanisms that could drive El Niño-like vs. La Niña-like trends.

KK: One mechanism that could lead to more La Niña-like change is that cold water upwelling in the eastern Pacific may keep warming at bay — the idea here is that the coldest waters at depth in the ocean are slower to feel the effects of climate change and provide a break on local rates of warming (see figure above). Another mechanism that could lead to more El Niño-like change is that radiative effects of global warming [the upward transfer of heat away from the surface] would cause the tropical atmosphere to become more stable, slow down the Walker circulation, weaken the upwelling in the eastern Pacific, and lead to more warming there (see figure below).

SL: A final possible mechanism may result in a La Niña-like future. The air over the western Pacific Ocean could become moister, promoting even stronger convection (showers and thunderstorms), and therefore strengthening the Walker circulation. At the same time, in the periphery of the Indo-Pacific warm pool, contraction of the cirrus cloud cover could cause more surface cooling by allowing more infrared radiation to escape to space, again helping to create a more La Niña-like sea surface temperature pattern (see figure below).

(D) Can we reconcile the seemingly different trends in the models versus the observations? Could they both be “right?”

 UH: It is entirely possible that the La Niña-like trends in the Pacific we are observing now are transient (short-term) and will reverse at some point in the next 100 years and start to look more like the modeled projections, with the eastern Pacific Ocean warming faster than the rest of the tropical oceans (9). Even if it is just transient, we need to understand these trends better: is it a response to global warming? (I tend to think so!), natural variability, or some mix of the two? However, this is difficult to diagnose using the models because the historical model simulations (run using observed historical forcings) and the observations still do not agree very well.

KK: It is fair to say both might be “right” in the very general sense that both sets of mechanisms are real and part of the fundamental physics controlling the climate system, but I don’t think we can say that both are right in terms of their relative importance. If the models and observations agreed on what *has* happened since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, then that would be one thing, but they don’t. As for the future, it is possible that a mixture of physical processes can evolve, and some of Ulla’s work has really been groundbreaking in thinking along those lines. However, I suspect that as time goes on, we will learn that the models are still not representing some of the key ocean processes very well (10), such as the currents and upwelling, and their relation to changes in the wind—especially in places like the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean where the thermocline is very shallow.

(E) How and when will scientists figure out where we are headed? What more could be done to help resolve this important question?

KK: Progress on the observational side might be slow. I don’t know how much more we can improve our ability to describe historical trends back to the 1800s. Even as different groups of scientists throw new statistical techniques to fill in the gaps, etc., the observational uncertainties aren’t being reduced very much. That said, we now have 40+ years of satellite data. When I started grad school, that was only 22 years. We probably have a few more decades to go, but we are getting closer to an acceptably long satellite record that can distinguish between ENSO, decadal variability, and long-term trends that are arising from human activities.

On the modeling side, heroic efforts are being done at modeling centers around the world to improve the representation of the physical processes. Perhaps gains will come from moving toward higher spatial resolution of the models as computers get cheaper and faster, which I suspect is critical for resolving upwelling, the shear between currents flowing in different directions, and the way that the friction from wind makes its way down into the ocean to influence the currents and mixing. I’m hopeful, and I’m glad I still have a few decades left to work on this fun and important problem!

SL: I agree with Kris that as the length of observational records increases, the impact of the internal variability on the trend diminishes, and therefore increasing the likelihood that the La Niña-like trends we’ve seen represents nature’s response to greenhouse gases. However, it is difficult to lengthen our historical record and infill where there are few measurements, so improving the accuracy of climate models is critical. Kris points out that we need to better resolve the ocean, but I think we also need to focus on how well tropical convection and rainfall is captured, which occur on scales that are unresolved by current model grid spacing. The current generation of parameterizationsstill warms the upper troposphere too aggressively and therefore weakens the simulated Walker circulation, leading to a more El Niño-like state.

For good reason, improving the parameterization is one of the most prominent research activities in climate science. At the same time, I believe that continued efforts should be made to develop new theories and to improve existing theories of fundamental mechanisms. In the meantime, for users who need to make decisions, it is important to recognize that there may be two different “storylines” for the tropical Pacific in the future, which they need to take into account.

Lead Editor: Michelle L’Heureux (NOAA CPC)

Footnotes:

(1) Tom has done a masterful job going over these questions. Check out his most recent post going over the latest IPCC findings related to ENSO and climate change. I also really like his older post using a dimmer switch metaphor.

(2) I’m avoiding using the term “zonal gradient” up top because it involves two fairly jargon-y terms that I think confuse most non-scientific readers. But, for those who are familiar, I’m talking about trends in the zonal gradient across the tropical Pacific Ocean. In other words, we’re interested in the relative rate of trends in tropical sea surface temperature, sea level pressure, rainfall, etc. in the zonal, or east-west, direction—i.e. comparing impacts between the eastern Pacific versus the western Pacific.

(3) Now some readers might ask “Wait, isn’t ENSO already tied to the pattern of sea surface temperatures across the tropical Pacific Ocean? El Niño is associated with ocean temperatures warming up (more than average) in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific and La Niña is linked to cooler ocean temperatures there. So how is this question about trend patterns any different from asking how ENSO itself will change?” Good question smart readers! 

Changes in El Niño and La Niña are most strongly tied to seasonal (3-month) average anomalies in the climate system, and this seasonal variability has its own mechanismsthat result in the growth and decay of events over the span of a year or couple years. In contrast, what we are talking about here is the slower, smaller background changes in the tropical Pacific that occur over multiple decades or even centuries. Even though the timescales and mechanisms are separate and distinct from the seasonal ENSO cycle, folks often use the phrases “El Niño-like change/trends” or “La Niña-like change/trends” to describe these longer, gradual trends.

Although potentially confusing, these terms provide a handy shortcut because El Niño-like change means that these trends will look more El Niño-like over the tropical Pacific (relatively warmer in the central/east Pacific and cooler in the western Pacific) or La Niña-like (relatively cooler in the central/east Pacific and warmer in the western Pacific).

(4) I think Sukyoung Lee’s review paper (which available through open access) is a nice place to start reading about different ideas and approaches (disclosure: two ENSO bloggers are co-authors). There are also more papers that have been released since that review paper was assembled that are also worth checking out:

Hartmann, D. L. (2022). The Antarctic ozone hole and the pattern effect on climate sensitivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(35), e2207889119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2207889119

Wills, R. C. J., Dong, Y., Proistosecu, C., Armour, K. C., & Battisti, D. S. (2022). Systematic climate model biases in the large-scale patterns of recent sea-surface temperature and sea-level pressure change. Geophysical Research Letters, 49, e2022GL100011. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL100011

Dong, Y., Pauling, A. G., Sadai, S., & Armour, K. C. (2022). Antarctic ice-sheet meltwater reduces transient warming and climate sensitivity through the sea-surface temperature pattern effect. Geophysical Research Letters, 49, e2022GL101249. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL101249

(5) For example, one recent study has shown that the ocean surface near the Galapagos Islands in the far eastern equatorial Pacific cooled down by about a half degree Celsius over the past 40 years.

(6) It is often useful to make a distinction between climate change and climate impacts. Climate change refers to the ‘big picture’ of how earth’s climate is changing in response to more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. This includes questions like how much the surface of the planet is warming, how the jet stream is changing, how fast the ice sheets are melting, and – you guessed it – how the tropical Pacific is changing. Climate impacts are the consequences of climate change that impacts humans locally. For example, climate impacts could be increased droughts, more frequent forest fires, flooding of coastal cities, stronger hurricanes making landfall. 

(7) The reason why La Niña events bring about wavier conditions is because the latent heat released during cloud formation in the tropics is mostly confined to the western part of the tropical Pacific. The latent heating generates so-called Rossby waves which are responsible for the aforementioned waviness (see Figure 6 in Lee et al., 2022). If the latent heating is uniform in the east-west direction, the heating cannot generate Rossby waves. Therefore, the more east-west confinement of the latent heating, the more the waviness, which has profound impacts on temperature and precipitation locally around the globe. The pattern of the future tropical Pacific is not necessarily the same as either El Niño or La Niña.

(8) For more details see: 

Lee, S. (2012). Testing of the Tropically Excited Arctic Warming Mechanism (TEAM) with Traditional El Niño and La Niña, Journal of Climate, 25(12), 4015-4022.

Clark, J. P., & Lee, S. (2019). The role of the Tropically Excited Arctic Warming Mechanism on the warm Arctic cold continent surface air temperature trend pattern. Geophysical Research Letters, 46, 8490– 8499. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL082714 

(9) Here are some papers that delve on the issue of future Pacific warming:

Heede, Ulla, and Alexey Fedorov. 2021. ‘Eastern Equatorial Pacific Warming Delayed by Aerosols and Thermostat Response to CO2’.

Heede, Ulla K., Alexey V. Fedorov, and Natalie J. Burls. 2020. ‘Timescales and Mechanisms for the Tropical Pacific Response to Global Warming: A Tug of War between the Ocean Thermostat and Weaker Walker’. Journal of Climate, April. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0690.1.

Wu, Mingna, Tianjun Zhou, Chao Li, Hongmei Li, Xiaolong Chen, Bo Wu, Wenxia Zhang, and Lixia Zhang. 2021. ‘A Very Likely Weakening of Pacific Walker Circulation in Constrained Near-Future Projections’. Nature Communications12 (1): 6502. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26693-y.

Ying, Jun, Matthew Collins, Wenju Cai, Axel Timmermann, Ping Huang, Dake Chen, and Karl Stein. 2022. ‘Emergence of Climate Change in the Tropical Pacific’. Nature Climate Change, March, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01301-z.

(10) Karnauskas, K. B., J. Jakoboski, T. M. S. Johnston, W. B. Owens, D. L. Rudnick, and R. E. Todd, 2020: The Pacific Equatorial Undercurrent in Three Generations of Global Climate Models and Glider Observations. J. Geophys. Res.–Oceans, 125(11), e2020JC016609, doi: 10.1029/2020JC016609.

This paper analyzed a ton of climate models, from the ones that were state-of-the-art a dozen years ago (CMIP3 / IPCC AR4) to the most recent generation of CMIP6 models that fed into the 6^thIPCC Assessment Report. While the currents along the equatorial Pacific have improved over time, there is still a ways to go, and this has implications for how SST changes.

Coats, S., and K. B. Karnauskas, 2018: A role for the Equatorial Undercurrent in the ocean dynamical thermostat. J. Climate, 31, 6245–6261, doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0513.1.

This paper analyzed a recent generation of global climate models (CMIP5 / IPCC AR5) and found, among other things, that the relationship between the wind stress and the underwater currents does not match observations in the eastern equatorial Pacific, which has implications for how SST changes in that climatically important region.