Measuring excessive rainfall

After changing my paper mill stench post into a climate change post you guys seem to be itching for one.
So here you go.

How can we measure excessive rainfall and is it becoming more common.

On a local level we can see excessive rain from water in the fields or tractor tire ruts.

On a regional level we can see excessive rain from the river coming out of its banks and flooding our town.

But on a national level if we want to see excessive rain we need to look at the Mississippi river water shed as this river drains most of our nation.

So what has the Mississippi river been doing of late.
The easiest way to see that is to look at my area.
We utilize spillways to control the river and deal with excessive water.

A little background info.
The river in New Orleans will handle 1.25 million cubic feet per second (CFS) of flow and yes that is a lot of water.
A spillway just north of New Orleans will handle 250,000 CFS. So now we are at 1.5 million CFS.
A second spillway farther north where the Red and Mississippi join will handle another 1.5 million CFS.
This second spillway has only been partially open twice since it was built.
They thought they would have to use it this year but never did.
So we can conclude for the river to surpass 1.5 million CFS is rare but has happened.

But lets look at this smaller spillway.
It has been used 14 times in 13 years since it was built in 1930.
Here is a list of the openings.





So lets look at this information.
This year 2019 is historic in it is the first year the spillway has ever been opened two years in a row. It is the first year they had to use this spillway twice in one year. And this year is the longest duration of days opened. It opened for the second time on May 10th and is still open today.

Looking a little deeper you will notice the spillway was used 8 years from 1930 to 2007.
That is once every 9.6 years.
But from 2011 to 2019 it has been used in 4 years or once every 2 years.

So while I will let you guys debate and argue if this is just a natural cycle or man made it would seem to even the most closed minded person that something is happening to our climate.

I look at it more from the point of what happens to the American farmer if he has 2 years in a row like this year where he can not even get into the field to plant a crop.
What happens to the USA as a country if our obese population is suddenly shopping at a grocery with bare shelves because there was no crop grown.

Oh just wait till next year or the year after, and everyone will be complaining about how dry it is. All we can do is except the weather we get, and make the best of it.

One of the reasons you have more water headed your way is we have less land for the rain to soak into (parking lots and streets don't soak up water). But this is not the only reason. We have had wet years in the past and will again. One of the big differences in the past farms were more diverse in what was planted. Established hay ground will hold more water, allowing it time to be absorbed into the soil, than tilled ground. Not many acres of hay left like there once was, now mostly row crops like corn & beans. Is the climate changing....maybe, maybe not. I would be more inclined to listen to the argument if politics were taken out of it. I am not refuting any of the information, you have provided.

Sems to me the spillway was open four times 1973-1983, three times at 100%.

During 2100-2019 it has been opened five times, never at 100%, for almost the exact number of days (per the chart, the text indicates longer)

These two periods seem statistically identical, thus suggesting a once-every forty-year period of 4-5 openings. Quite cyclic.

The only way that can be used as an indicator is to compare that flow to the previous 500 or 1,000 years. Less than 100 years in no way shows long term weather patterns.

It's hard to judge change in climate by using man made objects while ignoring all the other man made changes that took place over a period. Like dzc3 said, land use and ability of the ground to retain water has changed drastically. In 1937 airports, parking lots, many roads, whole areas that are paved today were grass or dirt. You didin't have storm drains pushing water to the river. We see that up here too. It changes the stats. I'm not saying the climate down't change or that man doesn't have an effect. I'm saying the climate is constantly changing and man can't control the sun or weather patterns.

In my area rivers flood more now than they did but a lot of that is more paved surfaces and increased drainage that gets the water off the land quicker to go into the rivers.

> The only way that can be used as an indicator is to compare that flow to the previous 500 or 1,000 years. Less than 100 years in no way shows long term weather patterns.

That would not be a valid comparison, since the Mississippi River of the 1500s did not remotely resemble the river as it has been for the past 75 years or so. Dams, levees and other man-made changes have totally changed the nature of the river's flow.

But if we want to map river flow against atmospheric CO₂ levels, the time period is totally valid, since we have very accurate CO₂ measurements starting in 1959.
Mauna Loa CO2

Not accurate way of doing it. As others have said. Ground use has changed. Farmers did it to themselves. Push all the bush, drain all the sloughs, now the water gets to the river ASAP. I read somewhere that an 18 inch diameter poplar tree holds almost 300 gallons of water. According to science water goes up with evaporation comes down as rain. There is only so much water in the world. It is stored in people, ground, trees, tanks, ocean, sloughs, etc. sloughs and trees evaporate faster giving rain more often. What goes up must come down. Now the water is all in one area evaporates and falls in the same area again and again. I?m not sure how far the water that evaporates travels in the air and comes down but if the winds run the same way then when one area that had water standing no longer does, somebody will no longer get rain. And all the water is in a different area somebody will get more rain. Plant trees and close drains and we might balance it again the way GOD made it. Makes total sense to me. I live in a area that had 25% of the land sloughs about 40 years ago. Now there is less than 5%. So the water that evaporated here always rains somewhere else. That somewhere else is now going to get 20% less rain. Makes sense to this hillbilly.

What were the co2 measurements from longer ago than that? We have no idea except in general terms what the weather was then so saying it's warmer or colder over a few years is impossible to determine. We can tell fairly accurately over the last several thousand, but the ups and downs over a decade or century is nothing more than a guess.

> What were the co2 measurements from longer ago than that?

Although we don't have accurate direct measurements, we have plenty of indirect evidence that current CO₂ levels are the highest they've been in human history and probably the highest in about half a million years. Cores taken from glacial ice are one source of data.

It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see there's a very close relationship between how much fossil fuel we burn and how much CO₂ is in the atmosphere.
CO2 levels in ice

Here is another way to compare the data given. Since I couldn't know actual flows, I calculated using full capacities for each day. So Days Open multiplied by the CFS the spillway was capable of multiplied by the number of seconds in a day (86,400) gives cap/day in CF that multiplied by number of days open gives Total Release Capacity in CF. I divided the Total Release Capacity by the 2019 amount to give a Volume Compared to 2019 Result (since this year is fresh in our memories and the Total CF numbers are too large to compare easily).
Enjoy:

I looked up the local records, the biggest flood, drought and highest temperatures where all over a 110 years ago. Must of been cow and buffalo farts!

And standing water where none has been for almost 50 years bringing bumper crop of mosquitos, not to mention alligators everywhere that they were never at before. My Grandaughters swim in a lake that always had a few gators but now theres too many of them and they are getting pretty bold, we don't let them go swimming by themselves anymore, has to be someone with a rifle go with them.

Who needs farmers? I sure don?t I can buy all the food I need right at Walmart. Excess rain is exactly opposite of what?s suppose to happen we are supposed to choke to death because of no water . Is the climate changing ? Ya I think so after humans are extinct the climate will continue to change

So what does that mean? And is it actually caused by fossil fuels? Or some other thing. And if it is what does it do? Last I heard the ice caps were growing and larger than in recent memory except for a section being melted by volcanic activity.
Nasa

Every 5 years a new road, or parking lot, or dike protecting a subdivision, or taller levee is built in the flood plain. Each of these restricts the river, raises it higher, slows it down.

What was smooth flat open fields in the river bottom here for thousands of acres the DNR took over and it has grown up into a thicket of scrub trees and shrubs a person couldn?t walk through. Flood waters 2-10 feet deep flow a lot slower through that!

We pave more and more land, water runs quickly to the small rivers and again piles higher.

We have changed that watershed a lot. We have forced the water to run slower, to rise higher.

You would need to factor that into your observations.


Then, weather seems to go on a more or less 30 year cycle. We are again in a rainy period, as has happened on a predictable schedule for centuries.

The climate does change. I farm 5 miles from the Minnesota river, it is carved into the ground 200+ feet deep. Because I also farm a few dozen miles from Swan Lake, which is the remnants of the glacial lakes of 10,000 years ago. The melting glaciers washed the Minnesota river valley out - we are a green version of the Grand Canyon here, the river valley is deep and wide. The ice was so deep it scraped 130 feet of clay off of the Mankato area and deposited it on my farm. As the ice melted my farm was part of the lake bottom, and a deep black topsoil formed from the aquatic life.

Yes, climate changes.

Yes, we have weather patterns that cycle through extremes.

Yes, we can change river flows with all the bulldozers and tar and concrete.

Paul

Thanks for that NASA paper, Jon. The Swiss were losing some of their glaciers and were preparing to sue the United States for causing global warming. Only problem was they found evidence of pine forests on the valley floor beneath the glaciers. Some of those trees had over 400 growth rings. They also found entrances to old silver mines on the mountain sides with the miner's tools all stacked so they would be ready when spring returned.

For probably twenty-five years in order to pave anything of any size you have to have a detention pond to go with it to force the water to be absorbed into the ground in the immediate area, and eliminate run-off. Fifteen miles of interstate here in southern NH has been getting widened over the last ten years, and there is a huge detention pond every 1/2 mile. So this additional pavement means less run-off, not more. The detention ponds for many parking lots is under the pavement so that unless you were involved in the construction you wouldn't have a clue that it is there.

Famous weather Joe Bastardi has followed wether patterns for years & he says it's not climate change/global warming. It's weather patterns & you can go back in years and he can predict the next weather patterns. First, the earth was going to freeze to death(covered in Time Magazine),then it was called global warming, when the polar caps started melting, and now it's climate change.

Our rain runoff in IND goes down the Mississippi R eventually. Our rainfall to date here is 12 inches above normal for this date on calendar. Ground being saturated means close to 100% of rainfall turns into surface runoff to the Mississippi R. Our weather here is governed by high altitude jet streams which bring weather fronts to Midwest each year. Those jet streams change course each year bringing different rainfall amounts to the Midwest and subsequent runoff to Ohio & Mississippi River. We also have removed substantial forest cover in this state in the last 200-250 yrs to increase storm runoff in farmed areas. Keep your spillways working it rained all afternoon today.

According to this info, there were NO floods before 1937. Amazing.

(quoted from post at 19:39:47 06/24/19) According to this info, there were NO floods before 1937. Amazing.

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Where do you get this from??????

> So what does that mean? And is it actually caused by fossil fuels? Or some other thing. And if it is what does it do? Last I heard the ice caps were growing and larger than in recent memory except for a section being melted by volcanic activity.

You've mis-characterized that article, but that's besides the point.

The way science works is this:
1. Scientists examine some phenomenon.
2. Scientists make a hypothesis about why the phenomenon is the way it is.
3. Scientist seek out new information that may support or refute the hypothesis. For example, scientists trying to prove Einstein's theories used a solar eclipse to determine if light is in fact bent by gravity. In the case of climate change, scientists typically seek out new and historical data to see if it confirms their theories.
4. Based on the new information, the hypothesis is confirmed, discarded or modified.
5. The process is repeated as long as necessary to fully understand the phenomenon. Which may take a very long time.

So today, we have a reasonably good understanding of climate change. Meaning we have confirmed that the earth is getting warmer, that the warming is due to rising CO₂ levels, and that rising CO₂ is largely a consequence of burning massive quantities of fossil fuels. And we have sufficient evidence to indicate that global warming will have dire consequences to our planet if it is left unchecked.

That is not to say we understand everything there is to know about climate change, as the article you cited indicates. That article is just one data point, and scientists are studying it to understand what it means. But one data point that is contrary to thousands of other data points does not disprove our basic hypotheses about global warming. It just means we don't fully understand it. And it certainly doesn't mean we don't have to worry about climate change.

I see a lot of one-sided arguments here.

One poster says that there are high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere as a result of burning fossil fuels. BUT, did that poster once consider or account for things like wildfires, volcanic activity, and natural decomposition of plant and animal matter?

How about another predicting that we are running out of fresh water? Really? That is the most renewable resource on earth. The best part is that it is all taken care of automatically!

Take into account that most of this hysteria over climate change is just that. Hysteria! Yes, the climate is changing. Just like it has been doing since the formation of this planet. Making silly gestures about controlling it is mostly an effort to control individual lives. Turn down your thermostat in the winter. turn it up in the summer. Buy smaller vehicles with better fuel economy. Ban plastic. Outlaw coal. Force electric companies to give preferential treatment to solar and wind generated power. And, the most insipid of all - "carbon footprint."

So, some folks get all uptight about all of this. What can you do about it? In reality, nothing. For every ounce of pollution you prevent, somebody in some other industrialized nation is replacing the little bit that you saved with 10 times as much. The Paris Accord is a good example of that. We reduce our carbon emissions at a cost of billions of dollars over the next 10 years to save about what China emits in about 2 weeks. And, this is fair?

How about this:
We live in the cleanest country on earth with the lowest emissions of any industrialized nation on earth. The USA is the world's inventor and innovator.

Could it be that the spillway was built in a relatively dry period in history for that area?

> One poster says that there are high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere as a result of burning fossil fuels. BUT, did that poster once consider or account for things like wildfires, volcanic activity, and natural decomposition of plant and animal matter?

Natural CO₂ production alone does not explain why carbon dioxide levels are the highest they've been in half a million years. But when you consider the additional CO₂ generated by burning fossil fuels, it adds up.

> How about another predicting that we are running out of fresh water? Really? That is the most renewable resource on earth. The best part is that it is all taken care of automatically!

Much of the world relies on runoff from glaciers and snowpack for water. Like most of the western US. No glaciers and no snowpack means no water. Excessive water in the Mississippi doesn't do the west any good because we can't afford to pump it a vertical mile to get it to where it's needed.

(quoted from post at 09:48:30 06/25/19) I see a lot of one-sided arguments here.

One poster says that there are high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere as a result of burning fossil fuels. BUT, did that poster once consider or account for things like wildfires, volcanic activity, and natural decomposition of plant and animal matter?

How about another predicting that we are running out of fresh water? Really? That is the most renewable resource on earth. The best part is that it is all taken care of automatically!

Take into account that most of this hysteria over climate change is just that. Hysteria! Yes, the climate is changing. Just like it has been doing since the formation of this planet. Making silly gestures about controlling it is mostly an effort to control individual lives. Turn down your thermostat in the winter. turn it up in the summer. Buy smaller vehicles with better fuel economy. Ban plastic. Outlaw coal. Force electric companies to give preferential treatment to solar and wind generated power. And, the most insipid of all - "carbon footprint."

So, some folks get all uptight about all of this. What can you do about it? In reality, nothing. For every ounce of pollution you prevent, somebody in some other industrialized nation is replacing the little bit that you saved with 10 times as much. The Paris Accord is a good example of that. We reduce our carbon emissions at a cost of billions of dollars over the next 10 years to save about what China emits in about 2 weeks. And, this is fair?

How about this:
We live in the cleanest country on earth with the lowest emissions of any industrialized nation on earth. The USA is the world's inventor and innovator.

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jmg, where would you ever get that information unless you listen to a person who is in the media a lot. What I see is 181 countries, many of them industrialized, that have lower CO2 emissions per capita than the US, and 26 industrialized nations that have better general air quality on June 25, 2019. We do a good job of keeping our solid waste picked up by simply loading it into containers and shipping it to third world countries. You just go ahead and keep on drinking the Kool-Aid, LOL.