September 26, 2014
Michelle Nijhus for National Geographic
In the moment, there is a big problem in California. There
are large droughts in the moment there, which blows dust up into the air, as
this is not held into the ground anymore. In California, the Water resource
relies onto to snow in Sierra Nevada. When the snow then melts, the reservoirs
in California fill, and so there is water for all the people. But scientists in
the moment have concerns about the snow. Due to the Dust blown into the air, the
Snow will also be affected by the dust as it will mix. Then due to the Snow
being darker, it can warm up a lot faster than normal. This means that there
are already full reservoirs from the winter snow, but then the spring melt comes
too, and so the reservoirs lose a lot of Water as their capacity is already
reached before the melt. This could then mean that the Summer is even drier
than before. Also it states that the Global Warming already speeds up the Snow
melt a lot.
The Article states that there is such a problem already in
the Rocky Mountains. The dust from California
has caused the snow to melt 50 Days earlier than normal which means that the
River in the end gets less Water than it has to have. Already the warming of
4°C could boost the melting process by 18 days. This could mean that the river
will have up to 5% less water than it normally has when these caused are not
present. Yet on the other hand the Scientists think that the Dust will not have
these catastrophic effects on Sierra Nevada as to the Rocky Mountains.
On the other hand it could be possible that there could be
even more snow than normal, as the dust from the Middle East is carried to the
USA, and so more clouds will form there which then means that there will be
more precipitation. Yet, this is not said to solve the problem, due to that the
snow could contain salt and bacteria causing the drought not to go away as
easily. So in the end there will only be more and more dust in the air causing
Global Warming, and also even harsher droughts.
I think that this is a really important topic, as many
million lives depend on something like snow. I think this is really a bad
decision to set onto snow due to that it slowly goes away now due to Global
Warming. Also I think the problem is really Man-made due to that the people
should never settle in a desert and hope for Rain to come. Also the Erosion
there for cities will be a problem, due to that the Dust problem was probably
caused by farmland Erosion there, which failed as there wasn’t enough Water
there for anything to Grow. Yet the scientists hope for more rain by; “We refer to it as Mother
Nature's perfect cloud-seeding system”. This means that there was 40%
more rain over California, but the rivers barely get anything back from this
water as the Water enters the ground and never comes up again as a lot more
water will be needed there. It is really a bad idea to depend onto Nature now,
although there is all this global warming really affecting the Nature now and
so it could mean that there will be a lot less rain there. Also I think it is
just not right for the people in California to think it is fine, due to that
the people near the Sahara desert and in the middle east really need the water
that the people in California now get. I think that this was really a bad
decision done hundreds of years ago, to settle there and then cause problems by
blocking off Rivers which lead to a drought and now these problems.
Jonathan,
ReplyDeleteWhat a fantastic article. I never thought about the dust particles that are in the air and how they may increase the time it is taking for snow to melt in the mountains. If we think about it, I guess it would make sense. In the winter, snow melts faster when it is surrounded by sand or rock because of the absorption of heat by the darker materials.