H2ONCoast

Below are two important climate related happenings for folks who would like to know more or who would like to be more involved with policy and science around climate change.
Senate to hold hearing on climate modeling
On May 8, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will hold a full committee [...]

Here’s a new twist on an new problem: climate change (or increased warmth and carbon dioxide associated with climate change) may increase weed growth too. One of the chief arguments that climate change isn’t such a bad thing after all–the Green Earth argument–is the logic that greenhouse conditions and CO2 will assist humans with greater [...]

It’s been a little while since I’ve had time to post to H2ONC. So here’s a quick update on a few newsworthy items that North Coaster’s and other readers should pay attention to:
Due to an amazingly sharp drop off in returning fish, the Sacramento Chinook salmon fishery has been closed from fishing, essentially closing [...]

For the communities on the North Coast that are fishery or sea-life dependent, comes some disturbing news out of researchers at the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO) which includes OSU. This particular posting is a reminder that climate change impacts cannot be easily predicted. The original OSU press-release reposted below [...]

The Oregonian has one of my colleagues from the Department of Geosciences on its front page today. Dr. Anne Nolin has studied patterns of melting and glaciation (or build up) on Mt. Hood for the last few years using remotely sensed information (satellite-gathered data primarily). While much discussion of global climate change patterns is–obviously–global, [...]

The good folks at National Geographic have put out a well done piece synthesizing a smattering of the latest science, economics and politics that wrap around the issue of a drying western United States. This is serious stuff and worth a read even for water logged North Coasters’. The article’s main premise: water management [...]

The U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S. AID) has been bashed on both the left and right for aiding and abetting some painfully bad episodes in international development. Regardless of the critics’ stances, the agency also does some fine things with our tax dollars, including assisting countries in managing coastal and freshwater systems in an [...]

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center has released its forecast for the spring 2008 season. As La Niña continues in the western equatorial Pacific with cooler than normal sea surface temperatures, the winds will continue to stall in the western Pacific, likely bringing drought to southern North America and wetter [...]

This is just a quick update now that I can ford the flood waters and debris to get to the office, and have steady Internet connectivity. More news will come as we dig out and have more time to devote to these luxuries.
It’s been a wild ride here on the North Coast as those of [...]

Hydrologists and others working with water pay careful attention to climate and climate change. Patterns that bring us increased or decreased precipitation should be high on the minds of anyone dependent on surface and groundwater resources. As I posted earlier, patterns generated by the El Niño and La Niña have wide-ranging impacts on [...]