Drought

Historical Analogs

The Palmer Drought Index peaked at about 68.1% in July. The 1950's drought resembles today's droughts the closest, because the 2012 data is only slightly higher. The geographical pattern of location and dryness of the 2012 drought can be compared with the previous droughts using Correlation Coefficient and Mean Absolute Difference. A lot of the Palmer Z index table dates were similar to the same ones in the past such as January to January, February to February and March to March. When month to month variablity is averaged, a persistant pattern appears. 1955 and 1956 are matched the closest in a historical analog just as 1988 and 2006 are close as well.

This relates to our current studies because we learned that, recently, in the 1950's there was such a thing called //The Dust Bowl.// The Dust Bowl was a large period in time where there was no rain, completely dry, and massive wind gusts would make their way to different states from places far away. It caused a lot of crop damage and lives were lost. This data also relates to us now because it was only 2012 a few months ago and hopefully we can predict what is to happen this year and many more years to come so we can prepare for such climatic changes.

River Basins

Different river basins had unusually dry conditions this last year, Upper Colorado experienced the driest year in the 1895-2012 record. The Midwest Regional Climate Center said that the drought has had low water issues in the Great Lakes to the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, a continuing concern. The PDSI for Missouri had the lowest value since the 1950's. The PDSI for the Mississippi River hit it's lowest in 1988.

This ties into our learning experiences because we just learned how to test water. Though, we did not talk about how dry it has become, this research will help us understand the data given on this website. Upper Colorado was the driest of the whole year, while the Rio Grande was 10th driest. This probably happened because the Rio Grande is a river. But that doesn't quite explain why a larger body of water such as the Great Lakes made 54th driest last year.

This is the Rio Grande river basin in New Mexico..

47.4% of Hawaii was affected by moderate drought on January third of 2012, growing to about 73% by Dcember 4th and for the last four years, December 4th being its peak. Several locations were in near record dry conditions this last year. Kahului read the the lowest rainfall for the entire year from 1955-2012 and Honolulu had the 5th driest, Hilo, 8th. In 2012, Annual rainfall at other islandic locations were near or above normal. Vocabulary List: PDSI-Palmer Hydrolic Drought Index Palmer Drought Index-the measurement of dryness based on recent precipitation Correlation Coefficient-is a measure of the linear dependence between 2 variables //X// and //Y,// giving a value between +1 and -1 Mean Absolute Difference-a measure of statistical dispersion equal to the average absolute difference drawn from a probability distribution Citations: uppergrandriver.org abhsclimatechangescience.wikispaces.com wikipedia.com dictionary.com ncdc.noaa.gov business.nmsu.edu mrgcd.com