Anthony Watts claims a scientist ignored his own work on US droughts

Anthony Watts latest claim (archived here, latest here) is that a scientist ignored his own research. At Anthony's climate conspiracy blog today, he copied and pasted a press release about a new paper on the Californian drought. Anthony wrote his article under the headline "Ridiculous claim from Columbia University: ‘Warming climate is deepening California drought". He thinks that it's ridiculous to think that evaporation will be higher under hotter conditions. He doesn't understand the basics of science at all. He also wrote:

From the THE EARTH INSTITUTE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY and the department of “intense droughts only occur in the age of the SUV” department, where they apparently failed to take the climatic history of the region into account:

And he put up a chart that he claimed came from from one of the authors of the new paper (though Anthony clearly didn't know that), in an attempt to dismiss this new work. In any case, it didn't. His graphic wasn't in the 2007 paper and the graphic didn't refute the new paper:

Human influence on the Californian drought

A much more acute situation

Daniel Swain and Noah Diffenbaugh and colleagues have been looking at the current drought in California to see if global warming has played a part. Earlier this year, their work was reported by Stanford:

The current drought is different from many of California's previous droughts. For example, the state's last major dry spell occurred in the early 1990s and was characterized by below-average amounts of rain and snowfall for several years.

"That's what we typically think of when we think of drought – a few years when precipitation is below normal. We don't conceptualize that the precipitation would just shut off," Swain said. "That's what's so remarkable about this drought. It's not a multi-year drought that's getting progressively worse as the years go by. It's that it has barely rained at all this year. That's a much more acute situation in a lot of ways."

Source: US Drought Monitor
(Click image to enlarge it.)

Three times more likely now than before industrialisation

Daniel Swain coined the term "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge" or Triple R, to describe the large region of high atmospheric pressure that's preventing rains from getting to California and is causing the current drought. Results from their work have recently been published in a special supplement to this month's issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS). It turns out that the conditions causing the current drought are three times more likely to occur with global warming than without.

Abrupt climate change at #AGU13 but still no reporting @wattsupwiththat from Anthony Watts

I made time this morning to watch some of the talks at the AGU Fall Meeting.  There was a particularly interesting segment on abrupt climate change.

Sea level rise with Richard Alley in Greenland and Antarctica

It started with a talk by Richard Alley who manages to be forceful about the need to take note of the science in a very engaging way.  (He's also recognised as the only climate scientist who can use the Comic Sans font and get away with it.)

Richard Alley spoke about the potential for abrupt sea level rise, particularly if the ice in Western Antarctica breaks down.  He pointed out that with the pace of change we're forcing, we're in unknown territory.  It reminded me of the Hansen et al paper in PLOS that was published earlier this month.

Richard Alley impresses with his message, like when he spoke of Hurricane Sandy and said in his slow understated way: "So when it comes fast, it's a bad thing." And then said how the sea level rise has not been fast - yet. Later on he put up these sea level projections - with some estimates a bit higher than in the IPCC report:

Richard Alley took a shot at economists who underplay the problems, too. I'm sure they know who they are. Then he got to the big question: What will the ice sheets do?

Thermal expansion alone will result in about 0.4 m (a foot) per degree Celsius.  But that, he said, is a "thousand year problem" because it takes a long time to warm the ocean.  It's the ice sheets that are the biggest problem in the near term.  As Richard Alley said, the uncertainty is "lopsided on the bad side".  In short, the Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers in Antarctica are flowing quickly but they've got to get through a narrow neck.  If that neck gets unblocked then we're in unknown territory. The ice there represents around 3.3 metres or 10 feet of sea level rise.  It's "jammed up behind a narrow mouth".  Richard said if it retreats "we get into physics that we don't really know what to do with yet".  Ice exhibits tipping behaviour.  Nothing happens for a while then all of a sudden....

Megadroughts and food shortages

There were some other excellent talks in the session on abrupt climate change, including a session on megadroughts - which can occur with or without AGW which is a big worry.  It's like we're daring nature to do her worst.  And a talk about food security and the sort of perils we are likely to have to deal with on that score this century, including the fact that we're soon going to be calling for genetic modification because conventional plant breeding just won't produce the results we need in a changing climate quickly enough.

All up a very informative day and all from the comfort of my home.

How did Anthony Watts fare?

Well, after Day Three there is still no evidence that Anthony Watts has seen anything he's capable of reporting on at the AGU Fall Meeting.  He did manage to muscle a handshake with a real scientist and passed another one he recognised in the corridor.  And he got to ask James Hansen a question, but we don't know the answer.

I get the feeling that Anthony Watts wants to be acknowledged in some way by "famous climate scientists". It might even be the reason he went to AGU13.  On the other hand he has to keep up his image with the denialati and maintain his rage at climate science and his mocking stance towards those same "famous climate scientists" - like his tweet about a slide from Richard Alley's talk this morning.

Given Anthony hasn't been able to produce any actual reporting or commentary like he promised, and he's had no luck getting any attention from anyone who's at AGU for the science, I wonder if this is the last time he'll venture into the lions' den or was it a den of thieves?

Of course he might surprise us and, using the video camera he has in a box, provide some polished in-depth interviews with some of the world's leading scientists who attended AGU13.  I won't hold my breath.

(I just watched Sharknado which, as everyone knows, was caused by climate change.  It was at least as credible as most of the comments at WUWT!)