The California drought looks worse from space: shocking NASA satellite images of a drying West

boing
1

[Permalink]

2

What’s the scale?

2 Likes
3

shitstorm.

6 Likes
4

I had something like that once… A little dose of penicillin should clear that right up.

2 Likes
5

Here’s a more comprehensive perspective from the same source (NASA GRACE), with a scale. It shows that the news media are sensationalizing the magnitude of water loss in California - other parts of the country are harder hit. The real reason we should be concerned is that California’s Central Valley is the major domestic source of produce in the US, so a drought there will make your vegetables expensive. Yikes!

2 Likes
6

Is the extra groundwater in the Dakotas due to injection via fracking?

1 Like
7

Not only is the scale of the colors not clear, but the Winter of 2001-2002 was much wetter than that of 2007-2008. I’d like to see the photos from 2011-2012, which were fairly wet years. It’s possible that the “drying trend” implied by these photos would not be nearly as stark if all years were included.

8

I would imagine it would be due to the normal cause - increased rainfall.

That said, is 3 more or less centimeters of rain per year all that much? It could add up over time, but that chart doesn’t seem to consider time.

9

Fracking might inject a couple million gallons per square mile, but a foot of rainfall is about 200 million gallons/sq mi.

10

It’s the Missouri floodplain which has been very active the past several years.

11

none of those harder hit areas support the population or agricultural load of the central valley.

1 Like
12

Then maybe they shouldn’t have overpopulated/overfarmed the central valley?

Oh wait that would require planning and research! Screw that, let’s build some dams.

1 Like
13

real planning includes planning for humans to have our heads up our asses to this degree. we always have. we always will. where has anyone done it right at scale? we should stop expecting salad in winter. that would help.

also, the post isn’t about dams, this is groundwater mapping. dams actually help reduce groundwater draw in the central valley when there isn’t a drought.

14

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.