Showing posts with label Drought. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Drought. Show all posts

Friday, January 8, 2016

How Satellite Technology Can Help California's Water Woes


(This post originally appeared on Forbes on 1/7/16)
It's raining hard here in Southern California for the second day in a row. After four years of drought it's a welcome change, but it's also causing problems. Again today my cell phone sounded an alarm for flash flooding, and the areas affected by previous fires are in real danger of mudslides. We are predicted to get a substantial amount of precipitation from one of the strongest El Nino events in a very long time. Still, the experts tell us that this one season will be unlikely to overcome our water woes.
For a very long time, California has been able to provide water for her cities and farms even though generally there is no rain for a long period between late spring and fall. The Mediterranean climate is not only enjoyable, it makes the growing of crops easier because they only get the water we want them to have during the growing season. Unfortunately, our municipal and agricultural systems have depended heavily on being able to store a great deal of water in the form of snow in the high Sierra mountains. When that snow-pack does not develop, we don't have the reservoir capacity to store enough to cover our needs through the dry season.

Over the past several years there have been cut-backs on water deliveries to irrigation districts in order to have some supply left for cities and for environmental needs in terms of at least some minimal stream flows.  The farmers have cut back on planting of annual crops so that much land is left fallow.  However, a great many California crops are perennial trees and vines that have to be watered to keep them alive.  Increasingly, farmers have been tapping into ground water using existing or new wells.  This can only be a temporary solution because the aquifers are being drawn down making pumping costs higher and risking salt water intrusions.
In the past, ground water has not been regulated to any great degree here in California. As the recent drought intensified, it has become obvious that some system needs to be implemented to make sure that our groundwater can be managed in a way that is equitable and sustainable. But that requires knowing a lot more about what is happening down below, and as the saying goes,  "you can't manage what you can't measure."  We are lacking the historical data to guide such a system. Fortunately, there is a program being piloted in our state by a diverse set of public and private forces which uses state-of-the-art technology to track groundwater in a way that was never before possible.
A couple of months ago I had a chance to interview Carl Ganter from the foundation-funded non-profit, Circle of Blue which has been active in the water arena for some time. They have teamed up with the folks at NASA’s GRACE program (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) which monitors small gravitational variations in the Earth from space. These are indicators of things like changes in ground water and allow us to "see" what is going on. Scientists at the University of California, Irvine are also part of that effort. Twitter is getting actively involved in providing “ground truth” such as data about pumping depths that are being experienced. The Columbia University Water Center and the Pacific Institute are also involved more from a policy perspective. Qlik, a company with data dashboard and business intelligence experience, is combining all this input and working out a way to make it comprehensible for all the stakeholders like government regulators, farmers and municipal water districts. This is another great example of a public/private, for-profit/non-profit partnership seeking to accomplish something none of the entities could do alone.
The hope is to have this “dashboard” of information specific to California live within a year or so. Then, the plan is to move on to other key regions like the Ogallala Aquifer and to the Southeastern US. Then the experience will be used to better visualize other critical aquifer issues throughout the rest of the world.
Being able to visualize our ground water won’t in and of itself solve our California water situation.  The experts warn that it will take more than one wet winter to recharge our aquifers.  We need to be doing some serious work on how to balance our water needs for the cities, the farms, and for environmental needs. These are contentious topics, but hopefully better data on the ground water aspect can help to inform a constructive approach.
You are welcome to comment here and/or to email me at savage.sd@gmail.com

Saturday, August 11, 2012

This Is Your Food Supply On Climate Change

OK, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think that this year's climate extremes are linked to human-caused climate change.  We might not really have the definitive answer on whether that is true for 20 years, but I would like nothing better than to be proven wrong about the linkage I'm making today.  From a global food supply perspective, the effects of weather on 2012 food production is problematic no matter what its cause.  As bad as it seems, it might just be a "shot over the bow" relative to what me might expect in the future. The unfilled corn cob pictured above is a relatively decent example of what the US corn crop is yielding this year.

How Hot Is It?

This isn't just about low rainfall.  There is a recent graph about temperature extremes on the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency) site that is striking. The 2012 difference from average is off the chart!


When it is both hot and dry, our dominant, rain-fed crops suffer the most.

It Isn't Just A US Drought

Yes, we have a massive drought in the US unlike anything we have seen for decades.  But there are also drought issues with wheat in Russia and excessive rain issues with crops in Western Europe that could ruin some of their harvest with mycotoxin contamination.  Ironically, the last season in Australia was better than many for their wheat crop which means that there is less low quality wheat going into the feed market that has been important for Chinese and other Asian meat production in recent years.
What ever this year's weather represents in a climate change context, it has been problematic for the global food supply.  The FAO (UN Food and Agricultural Organization) tracks the prices for various foods in international trade and generates a "Food Price Index" each month.  I've been blogging about this for a couple of years, but the new data released on August 9th is disturbing - particularly the data for cereals (wheat, rice, corn, soybeans,etc).  See the graph below


The red line is for the period 2010-12 and in the 30th month of that cycle we are seeing a 17% increase in one month - a steeper climb that was even seen in the 2007-9 price spike (green line).  This rise was seen even before the full magnitude of the US drought was known.  I shudder to think what the index will show next month.  The 2007/8 spike has been linked to a great deal of political insecurity and even credited as a driver of the "Arab Spring."  Hold on to your hats to see what this new price spike will mean.
Of course the impact of these high food trading prices depends on how dependent a country is on imports and how much of family income is spent on food.  There is an excellent new site from the Economist which compares countries around the world in terms of their food security and food spend.
I'll say it again.  This certainly looks like the sort of climate extreme and related food supply impacts that we would expect from climate change.  I both hope to be around in 20 years and to be proven wrong about my belief that "this is our global food supply on climate change."

You are welcome to comment here and/or to email me a sdsavage@sprynet.com
Drought damaged corn image from grifray