THIRTEEN: AND THE FORECAST CALLS FOR CHANGE
Tzilkowski and Hixson: Colleen O’Connor, “Massive Dust Storms Hit Southeast Colorado, Evoking ‘Dirty Thirties,’ ” Denver Post, June 9, 2013.
Similar dust storms: “Despite Fall Floods, Drought Persists in Southeastern Colorado,” NOAA, February 18, 2014.
The tumbleweeds have to be pushed: Garrison Wells, “Colorado Tumbleweeds Explosion Creating Hazards and Headaches for Many,” The Gazette, February 23, 2014.
In the largest airlift since Hurricane Katrina: Jason Samenow, “Colorado’s ‘Biblical’ Flood by the Numbers,” Washington Post, September 16, 2013.
The Boulder area broke every rainfall record on its books: Charlie Brennan, “Forum: Colorado Flood Not ‘The Big One,’ but Still an Event for the History Books,” Daily Camera, February 27, 2014.
A thunderstorm lifting: “Colorado Remembers Big Thomson Canyon Flash Flood of 1976,” NOAA, July 30, 2001.
A stationary low-pressure system: “Severe Flooding on the Colorado Front Range: A Preliminary Assessment,” CIRES Western Water Assessment, University of Colorado, September 2013.
“Rainfall and other weather events”: Martin P. Hoerling, “Climate Change and Extreme Weather: Recent Events and Future Forecasts,” Ohio State University Climate Change Webinar, April 24, 2014.
The scientists predict greater intensity and frequency: Working Group 1, contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policymakers,” 5.
As the world consumes: NASA Earth Observatory, “How Much More Will Earth Warm?” Global Warming, 5, http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/page5.php.
Some of them, including James Hansen: James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2009), 225–26.
Along the beaches: Claire Marshall, “Storms and Floods Unearth Unexploded Wartime Bombs,” BBC News, February 28, 2014.
The problem for climate scientists: Thomas C. Peterson, Martin P. Hoerling, Peter A. Stott, and Stephanie C. Herring, “Explaining Extreme Events of 2012 from a Climate Perspective,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol. 94, no. 9 (September 2013), 1.
What constitutes a rainy day?: G. J. Symons, British Rainfall 1866: On the Distribution of Rain over the British Isles During the Year 1866, as Observed at Above 1000 Stations in Great Britain and Ireland (London: Edward Stanford, 1867), 4.
Or he’d go on a tear: Ibid., 5.
“As well as looking forward”: Author interview with Mark McCarthy, the Met, Exeter, U.K., November 21, 2013.
At Slate: Charlie Warzel, “The Search for the Internet’s Next Top Weather Nerd,” BuzzFeed, February 5, 2014.
“My wife and I realized”: Eric Holthaus, “Why I’m Never Flying Again,” Quartz, October 1, 2013.
“What can all this be?”: Defoe and Hamblyn, The Storm, 7.
Every major: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “Consensus: 97% of Climate Scientists Agree,” Global Climate Change website, http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus.
will come to be seen like the vulture ship-salvagers: Malcolm Walker, History of the Meteorological Office (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), xvii.
Given its initial championing: Richard Schmalensee and Robert N. Stavins, “The S02 Allowance Trading System: The Ironic History of a Grand Policy Experiment,” MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, August 2012.
“The arrogance of people”: Senator James M. Inhofe, interview, “Crosstalk,” Voice of Christian Youth America, March 7, 2013.
The oil and gas industry: Senator James M. Inhofe, career donations, Center for Responsive Politics, OpenSecrets.Org, federal campaign contributions through March 10, 2014. The exact number is $1,587,596.
Other evangelical Christians: N. Smith and A. Leiserowitz, “American Evangelicals and Global Warming,” Global Environmental Change, vol. 23, no. 5 (October 2013), 1009–17.
“It’s the poor”: Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, statement to the Rev. Mitch Hescox, “Dr. Katharine Hayhoe Named TIME’S 100 Most Influential People,” Evangelical Environmental Network, April 24, 2014.
A growing number of scientists: “Jeff Goodell, Can Dr. Evil Save the World?” Rolling Stone, November 2006.
The European Geosciences Union: “Geoengineering Could Disrupt Rainfall Patterns,” European Geosciences Union, June 6, 2012.
As Powell said in his Arid Lands report: Powell, Report on the Lands of the Arid Region, 70.
The impossible caveat: Meyer, Americans and Their Weather, 138.
In The Martian Chronicles: Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (New York: Bantam Books, 1979), 67, 68.
EPILOGUE: WAITING FOR RAIN
Between August 1860 and July 1861: World Weather Records, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 79, “Cherrapunji, India, Precipitation in Inches” (Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institute, 1929), 246.
As the clouds meet the Khasi Hills: Ahrens, Essentials of Meteorology, 350.
But the locals were so hostile: Alexander Frater, Chasing the Monsoon: A Modern Pilgrimage Through India (London: Viking, 1990), 251–61.
Scientists have identified 250 orchid species: Meghalaya State Development Report, chapter 3, “Development and Management of Natural Resources,” 31–40, http://megplanning.gov.in/MSDR/natural_resources.pdf.
Florida is drowning in the rainiest summer: National Climatic Data Center, NOAA, “National Overview, Summer 2013,” http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2013/8.
Local governments shuttered the public schools: Hemanta Kumar Nath, “Assam Heat Wave: Death Toll Rise to 26,” India Blooms News Service, June 13, 2013.
By the time I left India: “India Raises Flood Death Toll, Reaches 5,700 as All Missing Persons Now Presumed Dead,” CBS News, July 16, 2013, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/india-raises-flood-death-toll-reaches-5700-as-all-missing-persons-now-presumed-dead/.
The “drip-tips” guide rainfall: Nalini Nadkarni, Between Earth and Sky: Our Intimate Connections to Trees (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 226.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CYNTHIA BARNETT is an award-winning environmental journalist who has reported on water from the Suwannee River to Singapore. She is the author of Mirage, which won the gold medal for best nonfiction in the Florida Book Awards, and Blue Revolution, named by the Boston Globe as one of the top ten science books of 2011. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her husband and their two children.
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