5 ms·

Extreme weather can occur in both directions. A year with more rain may be less prone to fire but more prone to flooding. It also does not take natural disaster

Extreme weather can occur in both directions. A year with more rain may be less prone to fire but more prone to flooding. It also does not take natural disaster to notice extremes. People who have lived in the same area awhile will know if there is an unusually wet, dry, hot, or cold year.

jjulius 5y ago
>... more prone to flooding. Or mudslides.
timmg 5y ago
> Extreme weather can occur in both directions. Of course that's true. What I guess I was trying to say is that a change in climate doesn't necessarily mean more extreme weather (in every instance, I mean). A change in climate could cause something to happen more or happen less. But no one is going to study a given year and a given place that doesn't have an extreme weather event.
- hedgehog 5y ago
  Discrete events are a human construct but the underlying data is continuous. I'm not sure the attribution of individual events is that meaningful and the article suggests for a variety of reasons the models aren't really built for that purpose anyway. So I think in a sense you are right, but this doesn't necessarily imply any problem for the predictive value of the models or research going into them.
- ruined 5y ago
  one thing to note is that, generally, any comparatively calmer system with fewer extreme events is in a lower energy state. and that is exactly what we are moving away from.
godelski 5y ago
Actually it even gets more complicated. California is a good example. Dry weather makes more fires yes. More fires means less vegetation with deep roots. Not only do these shrubs burn more easily, but they neither hold back water. This makes heavy rainfall more dangerous as flash floods become more common. It's crazy how interconnected these things are and frustrating because it becomes difficult to talk about. The whole picture is so complicated but focusing on a small aspect over simplifies the problem too much.
- Breazy 5y ago
  The wetter weather enjoyed by the past few generations of Californians was an aberration. California is usually even dryer than it is presently. > Paleoclimatological studies indicate that the last 150 years of California's history have been unusually wet compared to the previous 2000 years. Tree stumps found at the bottom of lakes and rivers in California indicate that many water features dried up during historical dry periods, allowing trees to grow there while the water was absent. These dry periods were associated with warm periods in Earth's history. During the Medieval Warm Period, there were at least two century-long megadroughts with only 60-70% of modern precipitation levels. Paleoclimatologists believe that higher temperatures due to global warming may cause California to enter another dry period, with significantly lower precipitation and snowpack levels than observed over the last 150 years.[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_California#Paleoclimatological_evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_California#P...
prawn 5y ago
Might be wrong, but I think unseasonably wet weather can also increase the fuel load for a fire. i.e., boisterous undergrowth due to wet weather during Spring, which then dries out and is available for fire season.
redisman 5y ago
Washington has also had unusually wet years that encourage more growth on the forest floor so there is more fuel by the time the 3 month dry and hot season rolls over

jjulius 5y ago

>... more prone to flooding. Or mudslides.

timmg 5y ago

> Extreme weather can occur in both directions. Of course that's true. What I guess I was trying to say is that a change in climate doesn't necessarily mean more extreme weather (in every instance, I mean). A change in climate could cause something to happen more or happen less. But no one is going to study a given year and a given place that doesn't have an extreme weather event.

hedgehog 5y ago
Discrete events are a human construct but the underlying data is continuous. I'm not sure the attribution of individual events is that meaningful and the article suggests for a variety of reasons the models aren't really built for that purpose anyway. So I think in a sense you are right, but this doesn't necessarily imply any problem for the predictive value of the models or research going into them.
ruined 5y ago
one thing to note is that, generally, any comparatively calmer system with fewer extreme events is in a lower energy state. and that is exactly what we are moving away from.

godelski 5y ago

Actually it even gets more complicated. California is a good example. Dry weather makes more fires yes. More fires means less vegetation with deep roots. Not only do these shrubs burn more easily, but they neither hold back water. This makes heavy rainfall more dangerous as flash floods become more common. It's crazy how interconnected these things are and frustrating because it becomes difficult to talk about. The whole picture is so complicated but focusing on a small aspect over simplifies the problem too much.

Breazy 5y ago
The wetter weather enjoyed by the past few generations of Californians was an aberration. California is usually even dryer than it is presently. > Paleoclimatological studies indicate that the last 150 years of California's history have been unusually wet compared to the previous 2000 years. Tree stumps found at the bottom of lakes and rivers in California indicate that many water features dried up during historical dry periods, allowing trees to grow there while the water was absent. These dry periods were associated with warm periods in Earth's history. During the Medieval Warm Period, there were at least two century-long megadroughts with only 60-70% of modern precipitation levels. Paleoclimatologists believe that higher temperatures due to global warming may cause California to enter another dry period, with significantly lower precipitation and snowpack levels than observed over the last 150 years.[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_California#Paleoclimatological_evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_California#P...

prawn 5y ago

Might be wrong, but I think unseasonably wet weather can also increase the fuel load for a fire. i.e., boisterous undergrowth due to wet weather during Spring, which then dries out and is available for fire season.

redisman 5y ago

Washington has also had unusually wet years that encourage more growth on the forest floor so there is more fuel by the time the 3 month dry and hot season rolls over