An Associated Press (AP) story picked up by Yahoo News claims that climate change is causing a trend toward hotter, drier summers and drought in the Northeast United States.
This is false.
There is no evidence drought in recent years is historically unusual. [bold, links added]
The article, by AP reporter Jennifer McDermott, titled, “Northeastern farmers face new challenges with severe drought,” calls the very recent below-average rainfall in the Northeast United States this summer an extreme weather event.
“But this summer has brought another extreme: a severe drought that is making lawns crispy and has farmers begging for steady rain,” McDermott writes. “The heavy, short rainfall brought by the occasional thunderstorm tends to run off, not soak into the ground.”
McDermott interviews activist/scientist Michael Mann to make the connection between climate change and the drought that parts of the Northeast have been experiencing recently.
McDermott writes:
The continuing trend toward drier summers in the Northeast can certainly be attributed to the impact of climate change since warmer temperatures lead to greater evaporation and drying of soils, climate scientist Michael Mann said. But, he said, the dry weather can be punctuated by extreme rainfall events since a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture — when conditions are conducive to rainfall, there’s more of it in short bursts.
Mann is not an honest broker. Climate Realism has repeatedly exposed his attempts to ignore or cover up data that tends to undermine the narrative that the world faces a climate crisis here and here, for example.
Droughts are normal weather patterns, especially in the late summer months.
Climate Realism has covered the data and evidence of drought throughout the history of the United States, which shows that climate change is not making drought more severe or frequent here, here, and here.
According to data from The U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM), approximately 19 percent of the Northeast United States is experiencing any degree of drought, with just 1.15 percent experiencing extreme drought.
None of the regions are experiencing the highest category of drought, “exceptional drought.” (See the figure below). This drought is not a long-term event.
Data from the USDM show only 1.26 percent of the entire Northeast region was experiencing any level of drought just 3 months ago, and that was moderate drought.
Most claims of increasing drought or heatwaves come from cherry-picked data and the “end-point fallacy,” where time periods of historic data are constrained to those that support the narrative.
It is a sort of lie by omission – because when the full extent of U.S. heatwave index data is looked at, which goes back to the 1890s, it is clear that the 1930s had much worse heatwaves than today. (See below)
Drought.gov’s Drought Early Warning System (DEWS) reports that the Northeast region often experiences what is called “flash droughts,” which are “short-term intense dry periods that can follow a period of normal to above-normal precipitation” that can last 2 to 6 months.
Only time will tell whether the current drought is anything more than a flash drought.
To understand drought trends for the region, it is instructive to dive into the drought history of individual states in the Northeastern region.
Rhode Island, for example, which receives particular attention in the AP article, is among the states suffering the most under the current drought, with approximately 66 percent of the state suffering severe drought, and the remaining 34 percent in extreme drought.
Yet the present drought is not that severe or unusual in historical terms.
Data from the Historical Drought Conditions archives show that Rhode Island’s most severe droughts occurred in the 1960s and before when the U.S. was cooler than today.
Rhode Island’s most severe drought since the records began in 1895 was in 1965, during a period when the Earth was cooling.
Data demonstrates many droughts before 1965 were more severe and extended than the present one. (See the image below)
If any trend can be gleaned from the data covering Rhode Island’s drought/rainfall history, it is a trend toward fewer, less severe droughts, and, in general, more consistent rainfall.
Somehow the AP and Mann missed this fact.
The data does not support the claims made by Michael Mann and parroted by the AP and Yahoo News that climate change is making drought more frequent or severe in the Northeast.
This is just one more instance of alarmists shamefully mispresenting a short-term weather event, as a sign of long-term climate change. The two are not the same and research indicates droughts are becoming less frequent and severe in the Northeast and in almost every region of the United States.
Read more at Climate Realism
The Eco-Freaks blame everything on Global Warming/Climate from Riots to Burnt Toast
I farm in South West Ontario, and I’m looking for some serious rainfall myself. This current drought reminds me of 2012. I’ve also been reading about La Nina. We are currently in the third consecutive La Nina year, which is somewhat rare. La Nina tends to favour monsoonal rain in the American south west, which is currently coming down in buckets. La Nina is described as cooling in the equatorial Pacific east and warming the Pacific west. No alarmist would want to publicize that our situation is caused by cooling somewhere else, but it is.
Also, the highest ever temperature recorded in Oregon was in 1898. The highest ever temperature recorded in Louisiana was 1936. I’m sure that there’s many more of these longstanding records elsewhere, and those are only where and when records were kept, in populated, civilized and scientifically curious societies.
The highest temperature recorded in North America was in Death Valley, CA, and it was in the 1930’s (don’t remember the exact date) but it’s never been broken.
As to the monsoon rains in the SW a friend lives in the Phoenix area and they were just hit hard with rain on Sunday. I live in the Denver area and yesterday evening we got hit really hard with heavy rains and 60+ MPH wind gusts. We got over 2″ of rain in about 1 1/2 hours. Then this morning got another half inch or so with more expected later today and tomorrow. This after a VERY dry summer up to this.
APS (Arizona Public Service) supplies electrical service to most all of Arizona. They have a web site showing current power outages. At one point Sunday there were 14 separate power outages in the general Phoenix area.
https://outagemap.aps.com/outageviewer/#msdynttrid=rhNC2E_nlEgT_b4mTYH1o9b9JoJeCQgO3xGop-_OBpE
Right now (202208161745 MST) there are four outages: Globe, Glendale, Douglas and Yuma. (Glendale is ‘part’ of the Phoenix urban area.)
Thank you SonnyHill… Yes, and down here near Philadelphia PA. our record high for August 17 is from 1896. In fact many days in the summer still has a record high in the late 1800’s or very early 1900’s.
No cars, no planes, electricity??? Hardly. And we have record cold days for these dates as late as the 1970’s. BTW, we are slightly below our average rainfall here which is the first time we have been in about 10 years! Guess it had to happen eventually. We had one day this summer that was close to breaking the record high which I had already forcasted back in November.In fact I thought it was going to be a longer stretch of near record highs but it leveled off with ocean air.
So frustrating because there is so much good news about climate change, or the lack there of. I am sickened by the scientists who must know the truth but push this tragedy on the world. People will go hungry and bankrupt trying to pay heating bills this winter.