Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Times website (Cassandra Ballard). Here’s an excerpt:

On Thursday [September 8, 2022], a minor fire popped up on the line between two fire districts in Grand Valley, the Colorado River Fire Rescue District and the Grand Valley Fire Protection District. It was quickly contained, but it could be a sign of things to come this fall if the Western Slope’s drying trend continues as forecast by the National Weather Service through November.

“As things dry out, those kinds of fires are common,” said Chief Lief Sackett of Colorado River Fire Rescue. “Just knowing how brown and cured out all the grass is this time of year, and how dry and hot it’s been, those are common fires.”

The good news is the worst extent of the anticipated heat is finally over, and a little rain should be coming.

Increases in most of the West and Plains states (except, not surprisingly, TX) led to a 1% increase across the Lower 48. 49% of topsoil moisture in the Lower 48 is now short/very short.

From email from Reclamtion (Susan Novak Behery):

In response to a hot dry weather pattern and continued decreasing flows in the critical habitat reach, the Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled an increase in the release from Navajo Dam from 850 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 900 cfs for tomorrow, September 10th, at 4:00 AM. 

Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell).  The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area.  The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.  This scheduled release change is calculated to be the minimum required to meet the minimum target baseflow.

Click the link to read the article on The Guardian website (Damian Carrington). Here’s an excerpt:

The climate crisis has driven the world to the brink of multiple “disastrous” tipping points, according to a major study. It shows five dangerous tipping points may already have been passed due to the 1.1C of global heating caused by humanity to date. These include the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap, eventually producing a huge sea level rise, the collapse of a key current in the north Atlantic, disrupting rain upon which billions of people depend for food, and an abrupt melting of carbon-rich permafrost. At 1.5C of heating, the minimum rise now expected, four of the five tipping points move from being possible to likely, the analysis said. Also at 1.5C, an additional five tipping points become possible, including changes to vast northern forests and the loss of almost all mountain glaciers.

In total, the researchers found evidence for 16 tipping points, with the final six requiring global heating of at least 2C to be triggered, according to the scientists’ estimations. The tipping points would take effect on timescales varying from a few years to centuries.

“The Earth may have left a ‘safe’ climate state beyond 1C global warming,” the researchers concluded, with the whole of human civilisation having developed in temperatures below this level. Passing one tipping point is often likely to help trigger others, producing cascades. But this is still being studied and was not included, meaning the analysis may present the minimum danger.

Prof Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who was part of the study team, said: “The world is heading towards 2-3C of global warming.

Click the link to read the article on the Writers on The Range website (Pepper Trail):

Just about every video game, young adult novel and buzz-worthy streaming series agree that we need to prepare for a post-apocalyptic world. Up ahead, around a sharp curve or off a cliff, it is waiting—The Apocalypse.

Maybe not “the complete final destruction of the world,” but certainly “an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale,” to quote the two definitions in the Oxford Online Dictionary. Not yet, but soon.

This has me wondering: How will we know when we move from pre- to post-apocalypse? This summer, my hometown in southern Oregon was crushed under a heat dome, sweltering in triple-digit temperatures. A fire across the state line ignited and within 24 hours exploded to become California’s largest wildfire this year so far.

The two mountain lakes that provide water to our valley orchards and vineyards are at 2% and 6% full, that is, 98% and 94% empty. Last year, an even more severe heat dome pushed temperatures in normally cool Seattle and Portland to record-shattering levels, wildfires burned more than a million acres in Oregon and 2000-year-old giant sequoias perished in fires of unprecedented severity in California’s Sierra Nevada.

Catastrophic extremes are becoming normal. The Great Salt Lake is at the lowest level ever recorded, spawning toxic dust storms. A mega-drought has shriveled the Colorado River, with the beginning of major cutbacks in water deliveries to Arizona and Nevada. Elsewhere in the West, flooding devastated Yellowstone National Park in June, collapsing roads and leading to the evacuation of over 10,000 visitors.

Widening our view, Dallas is currently inundated with what is described as a “1,000-year” flooding event, following similar flooding disasters in Las Vegas, St. Louis and Kentucky earlier this summer. Across the Atlantic, Europe was scorched by the highest temperatures ever recorded this summer, triggering massive wildfires, the collapse of a glacier in Italy and over 10,000 heat-related deaths. India, China, and Japan experienced record heat waves this year.

I could go on, but no doubt you have read the news, too, about climate-caused apocalyptic events. Closely related is the global extinction crisis, with over a million species at risk by the end of this century. Bird populations in the United States have collapsed by one-third in the past 50 years, and the world’s most diverse ecosystems, including tropical rainforests and coral reefs, could largely disappear in coming decades.

Let’s also not forget the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed at least 6.46 million people worldwide and sickened 597 million. That pandemic shows no sign of ending as the virus continues to evolve new variants. Meanwhile, the new global health emergency of monkeypox has been declared. And polio, once eliminated in this country, is back, thanks to people who aren’t vaccinated.

What about America’s social fabric? According to a poll taken this summer by the New York Times, a majority of Americans surveyed now believe that our political system is too divided to solve the nation’s problems. The non-profit Gun Violence Archive has documented 429 mass shootings so far this year in America, with “mass shootings” defined as at least four people killed or injured.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade has led to a rapid and stark division of the country into states that permit abortions versus those that outlaw it. Republicans and Democrats increasingly live in separate media universes, with both sides concerned about the possibility of a civil war.

I admit this is a staggering list of “damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale,” but I’m not ready to declare myself a citizen of the post-apocalypse. We don’t have to live there. Instead, let’s accept that humanity and the whole planet are “apocalypse-adjacent.” The apocalypse is before us and we can see it clearly. But the world is not yet ruined.

Human beings do have this redeeming and also infuriating trait: We are at our most creative and cooperative when it is almost too late. We can — we must — pull each other back from the brink. To fail is to condemn our children to live in the hellscape of a dystopian video game. As they will tell you, that is no place to be.

Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a naturalist and writer in Ashland, Oregon.

Click the link to read the article on the NOAA Website (Theo Stein):

The people, economy, and ecosystems of the Pacific coast states of California, Oregon and Washington are highly dependent on cool-season atmospheric rivers for their annual water supply. These long, narrow flows of saturated air can transport enormous amounts of water vapor – roughly equivalent to the flow at the mouth of the Mississippi River. They can unload  heavy precipitation on the Cascade and Sierra Nevada ranges, but their annual yield regularly swings between boom and bust. 

When atmospheric rivers, or ARs, fail to materialize, droughts often follow – especially in California, where they account for over 50% of the total annual precipitation. Anticipating future climate-induced changes to AR patterns is therefore exceedingly important. Global models, however, do a poor job of simulating precipitation over the complex terrain of coastal and inland mountain ranges. Now, a new NOAA study using data generated by regional climate models and published in the journal Climate Dynamics suggests climate change will likely alter atmospheric rivers in ways that will make managing water more difficult.  

“These high-resolution climate simulations showed something we hadn’t seen before, which was decreased future precipitation amounts across many mountainous regions of the western United States,” said lead author Mimi Hughes, a research scientist in NOAA’s Physical Sciences Laboratory. 

Atmospheric rivers can be both beneficial — when they provide water to fill reservoirs and build snowpack — and calamitous — when they generate so much precipitation over a short period of time that they cause flooding. Although numerous studies have investigated climate projections for atmospheric rivers, few have examined whether climate change would have a uniform impact on all events. 

Downscaling climate models to better predict future impacts

For the new paper, Hughes and a team of Physical Science Lab and colleagues from CIRES and NCAR analyzed data from regional climate models simulating weather conditions over most of North America for the period 1950–2100. They specifically looked at the end-of-21st-century changes in integrated water vapor transport (IVT) events along the western US coast in three of the highest-resolution regional climate models. IVT is a measure of how much water vapor is moving through the air and was used as an indicator of atmospheric rivers making landfall. 

Rather than evaluate the simulated impact on all model-generated atmospheric rivers, researchers partitioned the events into two categories – modest and extreme – and then looked for different outcomes. 

Hughes said their findings are consistent with previous global climate model projections of increased lower-elevation precipitation across much of the western U.S. However, differences did emerge. The simulations projected moderate events to be less frequent and deliver less high-elevation precipitation, a finding that tracks another recent NOAA study.

A drier future for California’s most important “reservoir”?

The Sierra Nevada mountains are an irreplaceable component of California’s current water system. Snowpack in the high Sierras acts like a giant reservoir, releasing clean water during the melt season. Sixty percent of California’s water supply originates in the high Sierras. More than 75% percent of Californians drink water generated by Sierra snows.

Notably, more than half of the model runs in the new study showed that Sierra snowpack would receive decreased precipitation by 2100, while the arid Great Basin might benefit from a moisture boost. 

This study suggests these two types of atmospheric rivers could change in different ways under climate change, with the beneficial kind becoming less frequent, Hughes said. 

“While we did not specifically examine seasonal precipitation outcomes like droughts, it’s fair to conclude that if these projections bear out, California’s strained water resources may become even more challenging to manage,” she said.  

For more information, contact Theo Stein, NOAA Communications, at theo.stein@noaa.gov. 

Click the link to read the article on The Washington Post website (Laura Reiley). Here’s an excerpt:

Corn, wheat and other agricultural products withered in a year of glaring climate change impacts

Farmers, agricultural economists and others taking stock of this summer’s growing season say drought conditions and extreme weather have wreaked havoc on many row crops, fruits and vegetables, with the American Farm Bureau Federation suggesting yields could be down by as much as a third compared with last year. American corn is on track to produce its lowest yield since the drought of 2012, according to analysts at Rabobank, which collects data about commodity markets. This year’s hard red winter wheat crop was the smallest since 1963, the bank’s analysts said. In Texas, cotton farmers have walked away from nearly 70 percent of their crop because the harvest is so paltry, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The California rice harvest is half what it would be in a normal year, an industry group said.

The poor yields are probably more than a one-year blip, as climate change alters weather patterns in agriculturally important parts of the country, contributing to higher food prices that experts don’t see ebbing any time soon. Drought has consumed 40 percent of the country for the past 101 weeks, USDA meteorologistBrad Rippey said. But precisely where that 40 percent is has shifted over time, meaning different swaths of the country’s agricultural land have been affected at different times, spreading pain and difficult choices geographically and by crop.

“The biggest impacts this year have been the Central and Southern Great Plains — Nebraska southward through Texas — and the two big crops hit this year are grain sorghum [primarily used for animal feed] and cotton,” Rippey said…

In California, farmers are making tough choices to give up on their strawberries and tomatoes, lettuces and melons, so that whatever water they get goes to crops such as almonds, grapes and olives, into which they’ve sunk multiyear investments and which provide a better payoff, Rippey said…

The USDA had reduced its corn forecast last month because of this summer’s drought. But thePro Farmer Crop Tour, which concluded Aug. 25, found the corn yield was even worse than that lowered expectation. The on-the-ground inspectors also found the corn quality had suffered as a result of heat and dry conditions, with cobs carrying small grains and many suffering from “tipback,” when kernels are missing from the outer edge…Wheat has taken a walloping this year, with rains impeding spring planting after a protracted La Niña weather pattern meant several years of hotter and drier weather over key production areas. Drought is also having a dramatic effect on California rice, which isgrown mostly in the Sacramento Valley. The state, which grows medium-grain rice such as sushi rice, is at about half of a normal year’s production, said Katie Cahill, spokeswoman for the California Rice Commission. Many growers decided to fallow their fields and sell their water to perennialcrops such as almonds to defray their losses…The USDA recently estimated that the tomatoharvest this year will be 10.5 million tons, more than a million tons shy of a normal season, which will be reflected in the next year’s pizza, spaghetti sauce and ketchup prices. Harvest of the new potato crop is underway, and Rabobank analysts say the harvested area is projected to drop 4 percent from last year (and last year’s crop was the lowest in a decade). Its analysts also said year-to-date shipments of carrots are down 45 percent, sweet corn down 20 percent, sweet potatoes down 13 percent, and celery down 11 percent, all an indication of short supply. And according to the USDA, total peach production was down 15 percent from 2021, mostly because of California’s small crop…

But the bad news extends to cattle, portending bad news for next year’s beef prices. When weather is dry and hot, there’s not enough natural feed to go around. To sustain a herd, ranchers must bring in hay, and feed prices soar, prompting ranchers to sell their animals a little early, and often to sell heifers, the young females, rather than keep them as breeding stock, said Sarah Little, spokeswoman for the North American Meat Institute, a trade association. This has resulted in lower beef prices for consumers in the short term but signals that there probably will be a tighter supply next year.

Click 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

This U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) week saw continued improvements on the map across areas of the South, including Texas, in response to another round of localized heavy rainfall during the past week. Overall, the recent rainfall in Texas throughout the past month has started to make a significant dent in the state’s drought conditions in some areas. In contrast, drought conditions intensified in areas of the central and northern Plains with additional degradations on this week’s map. In these areas, recent drought impact reports submitted to the National Drought Mitigation Center indicated drought-related impacts within the agricultural sector including reduced crop yields as well as deteriorating pasture and rangeland conditions. Out West, the big story of the past week has been the heat wave that has impacted the region with record-setting temperatures and critical fire-weather conditions. The hot temperatures and strong winds exacerbated conditions on the Mill Fire, which broke out in Northern California on Friday, forcing the evacuation of the town of Weed, California as well as neighboring communities. In Death Valley, California, high temperatures exceeded 125 deg F multiple times during the past week including on September 1st when the high temperature reached 127 deg F―potentially breaking the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded during September, according to preliminary reports. Elsewhere, shower activity in the Northeast led to isolated improvements in drought-affected areas of Massachusetts and Connecticut, while further to the south conditions deteriorated on the map in Delaware. In the Midwest, short-term precipitation deficits and declining soil moisture levels led to the expansion of areas of drought in northern Missouri and central Illinois…

High Plains

On this week’s map, drought-related conditions continued to intensify across areas of southeastern Wyoming, northeastern Montana, Nebraska, southern South Dakota, and western Kansas, as anomalously hot temperatures impacted western portions of the region. According to the National Drought Mitigation Center’s Condition Monitoring Observer Reports (CMOR), numerous drought impact reports have been submitted during the past 30-day period. Impacts include reduced crop yields, poor pasture conditions, and the need for supplemental feeding of livestock. The current drought situation was exacerbated by this week’s intense heat, with average maximum temperatures ranging from 95 to 100 deg F in areas of eastern Montana, northern and eastern Wyoming, and western portions of South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas…

West

Out West, an anomalous upper-level ridge parked over the central Great Basin during the past week—leading to a dangerous heat wave and record-high temperatures across the region. The record heat exacerbated fire-weather conditions across Northern California, the Pacific Northwest, and the Northern Rockies as well as taxed California’s power grid in response to the record-high demand reported this week. Most of the region saw no precipitation this week, except for some isolated storm activity in western Washington, Arizona, eastern Colorado, and eastern New Mexico. On this week’s map, areas of drought expanded in southwestern and central Montana, and in northern Wyoming. Areas of Extreme Drought (D3) in the Four Corners region were trimmed back as part of a re-assessment of the impact of monsoonal rainfall during the past several months. Looking at reservoir storage conditions, the two largest reservoirs in the Colorado River system, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are currently 28% and 24% full, respectively.

South

In the South, widespread improvements were made across Texas this week in response to another round of moderate-to-heavy rainfall that impacted isolated areas of the state, with accumulations ranging from 2 to 6+ inches. The recent rains have provided a much-needed boost to soil moisture and streamflow levels. Despite the recent rains, streamflow levels in some areas of the Hill Country have yet to recover, with gaging stations on numerous rivers and creeks reporting below-normal flows (ranging from the 2nd to the 24th percentile), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Elsewhere in the region, this week’s rainfall led to improvements in eastern Oklahoma, northern Arkansas, northern Mississippi, and western portions of Tennessee. For the past 30-day period, much of the region experienced above-normal precipitation with the greatest positive departures (ranging from 6 to 12+ inches) observed in the Basin and Range and southern portion of the Gulf Coastal Plains of Texas, northern Louisiana, and central Mississippi. Overall, average temperatures for the week were within a few degrees of normal, with larger negative departures (2 to 4 deg F below normal) observed in western Texas.

Looking Ahead

The NWS WPC 7-Day Quantitative Precipitation Forecast (QPF) calls for moderate-to-heavy precipitation accumulations ranging from 2 to 5+ inches across areas of the Southeast including Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. Likewise, 2 to 4+ inch accumulations are forecasted for areas of the Upper Midwest in Wisconsin and Upper Peninsula Michigan. Conversely, lighter accumulations (<1.5 inches) are expected across eastern portions of the South, Lower Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and the southern extent of the Northeast. Out West, accumulations of less than an inch are expected in areas of Southern California including the Mojave Desert, Transverse Ranges, and the southern Sierra. Elsewhere, areas of the central Great Basin, Northern Arizona, and Northern Rockies are expected to receive modest rainfall accumulations. The CPC 6-10-day Outlooks calls for a moderate-to-high probability of above-normal temperatures across the West, the Plains states, and along much of the Eastern Seaboard. Below-normal temperatures are expected across the Pacific Northwest and the Upper Midwest while there is a low-to-moderate probability of below-normal temperatures across areas of the South and Lower Midwest. In terms of precipitation, below-normal precipitation is expected across the South, Plains states, and Upper Midwest, whereas above-normal precipitation is expected across much of the West, and East Coast. In Alaska, above-normal precipitation is forecasted across much of the Interior, Southwest, and Southcentral, while areas of the southern Panhandle have a low-probability of below-normal precipitation.

Just for grins here’s a gallery of early September Drought Monitor maps for the past few years.

Click the link to read the guest column running on The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website (Mark Waltermire):

Colorado’s farms are at peak production, market season is in full-swing and the season’s bounty is being served up on tables across the state. In this hot weather, as we enjoy Colorado’s local food cornucopia, we should think of the farmers and farmworkers up early and in the fields, working to feed the nation. Farming is hard work, which many people appreciate.

The hard work of farming includes much more than just the field work. It includes building and maintaining ditches to get water to our crops and roads to get those crops to market. So when Congress passed and President Biden signed the infrastructure law this year, I saw it as a boost to my ability to turn hard work in my fields into a living that works for me.

The infrastructure act also makes progress in addressing climate change. Everyone knows drought is a real threat to agriculture, but so is heat. Heat hurts our crops, it hurts our animals and it can be deadly for those who have to work outside. Using this investment to help prepare for a climate-smart and adapted future will be good for farming, too.

Climate change is here, and farming, our food systems and the supply chain are all especially vulnerable. Unless we get ready now, the hurt will only be worse down the road, which is why another new law, the recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), also makes good sense.

For agriculture, rural communities and conservation, the IRA is a big win for several reasons. It helps make our farms and communities more resilient. It prioritizes funding to restore and protect watershed and public land health, for instance, and to improve soil health.

The IRA also takes huge steps in reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas pollution. While we need to prepare for the heating that is here and to come by adapting our systems to be more resilient (and the new law begins to do that), we really need to stop making the problem worse.

This legislation does that as well, by increasing the uptake of more renewable energy and supporting rural electric co-ops in that transition. And it accomplishes an important third component, too, just as crucial as these first two. By focusing on improving land health and conservation practices, the IRA can help us better manage carbon by encouraging practices that return and store carbon in the ground, in soils and in natural systems.

The potential here cannot be overstated for western Colorado, and rural communities in particular, should seek to actively lead in this effort to center land-use and agriculture as climate action. For example, an analysis by the Colorado Farm and Food Alliance has found that the ability to store carbon in soil on farmland just within five counties on the Western Slope could be increased by more than ten-fold by shifting to incorporate more cover-cropping.

Relatively small investments in these practices will make a real difference. Resources that help farmers strengthen their resiliency and improve techniques — resources that are increased under the IRA — can be a real boost. The future of farming, even our survivability in the American Southwest, means we need to get this right. Let’s make sure the funding available for infrastructure and in bolstering healthy natural systems and the ecological services they provide finds its way to our farms and ranches.

By investing in rural communities through resources dedicated to restoring land, watershed, and soil health — as well as supporting more home-grown renewable power — we can all help in bringing real benefit to our communities as we address the climate crisis. Western Colorado can and should be a global leader in rural climate action. We should welcome and seize the opportunity the new Inflation Reduction Act brings.

Mark Waltermire owns and operates Thistle Whistle Farm outside of Hotchkiss and is active with the Valley Organic Growers Association, Colorado Farm and Food Alliance and other projects that promote secure, equitable and resilient farms and local food systems.