A&M prof – global warming droughts for Texas

From a release by the Texas Extension Service:

During the next few decades this year’s summer of 100-plus temperatures and parched soils may represent the norm, not the exception, for much of Texas, said a climatology expert.

However, this winter could be wetter, thanks to an El Niño currently building in the Pacific, but the long-term trend suggests more hot and dry summers, said Dr. Gerald North, professor of atmospheric sciences and oceanography at Texas A&M University.

El Niño generally produces wet winters for the south, from Florida to Texas, he said.

“One thing for sure. All the (climate) models say things are going to get warmer in the U.S. and the rest of the world,” he said. “But it’s a gradual process; a kind of stagger-step trend upwards. It may warm for a few decades, then slows down, then warms again for a few decades.”

North bases his predictions on a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, an organization composed of thousands of scientists from more than 100 countries, he said.

“In the report are all sorts of results from climate (computer) model runs,” North said. “What I’ve done is try to summarize what these runs mean for this region. ... What they suggest is that the tropical climates will expand northward. This seems to have been happening in the past and will continue to happen in the future.”

What is a tropical climate? Think of Central Texas during a typical summer, North said. The last storm front comes through roughly in the middle of June, and brings with it nice rains.

“During those months of the summer, all we have are these blue skies and little puffy clouds, occasional little rains in the afternoon. That’s tropical climate.”

“As global warming proceeds — this is the theory, it’s what the models say — the storm belt moves northwards,” he said. “And that particularly affects us here in the summertime, when we get no fronts.”

North said it is possible that the current drought is not indicative of a permanent trend, but is an anomaly, as were the droughts of the 30s and 50s.

“It could be just a fluke that persists for a decade,” he said. “But my guess is that it’s here to stay, but with fluctuations up and down.”

More information on drought in Texas can be found at the Web site of the Drought Joint Information Center here.