NOAA's Richard Seager and Marty Hoerling released a new report on Monday that is sure to please the deniers who will, we're sure, have no qualms hyping this model-based study even as they otherwise continue to bash models as unreliable and worthless. The top line is simple enough, as captured by USA Today's headline "Study: Causes of Calif. Drought are natural, not man-made."
Dr. Michael Mann was quick to respond with a Huffington Post piece that adds context by citing other studies on the California drought, while highlighting how the NOAA report has a narrow focus. Mann points out the obvious failing of the report, saying, "[T]he authors pay only the slightest lip service on the role of surface temperature in drought."
As anyone with an understanding of the water cycle knows, warmer temperatures means more evaporation. There have been a slew of new studies, as Mann points out, that investigate the link between record high temperatures in California and more severe drought (including one that finds the drought is exceptionally severe in the context of at least the last millennium, as The Guardian covers in some detail). Peter Gleick, meanwhile, has a short post on climate and drought with a long list of recent papers showing the connection.
When writing the NOAA report, Seager and Hoerling must also have turned a blind eye to their own March study, which concludes, "Long-term changes caused by increasing trace gas concentrations are now contributing to a modest signal of soil moisture depletion, mainly over the U.S. Southwest, thereby prolonging the duration and severity of naturally occurring droughts."
Joe Romm provides even more context about the connection in Climate Progress.
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