tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post8960689829859452909..comments2023-09-28T08:13:11.489-07:00Comments on Only In It For The Gold: DewMichael Tobishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08229460438349093944noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-24395253191542637832011-05-14T15:55:17.284-07:002011-05-14T15:55:17.284-07:00Regarding Dew, here in Eastern Australia bushfires...Regarding Dew, here in Eastern Australia bushfires are a serious vegetation management problem and dew, through the cooler months has played an important but not always appreciated part in hazard reduction burning - it makes possible the lighting of low intensity fires through the cooler evenings with good expectation that these will self-extinguish during the night . Manpower and resources and perfect weather forecasting are simply not available to do larger areas with any sense of certainty that the fire will be contained - and warmer nights with less dew increase that uncertainty.<br /><br />For those who live elsewhere in the world, much Australian vegetation tends to be highly flammable with dead and dry material building up - decay, due mostly to lack of moisture, can't keep up, and more so during drier drought periods. Over the course of years the amount of fuel builds up and if left will tend to end up burning as fierce, destructive and unstoppable wildfires during the hotter and drier conditions of summer.Kenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07765675817302207109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-57879374110551525482011-05-12T10:43:53.299-07:002011-05-12T10:43:53.299-07:00Cases like that of Gujarat (India) poses a difficu...Cases like that of Gujarat (India) poses a difficult issue of attribution. <br /><br />Though I do not know enough for discussing the cause of the change there, it smells to me that local anthropogenic forcing rather than global one is mainly at work. Irrigation will result in locally moister and cooler (at least in daytime in hot seasons) condition, and stopping it will shift the local climate oppositely. The change is not likely to be proportional to depletion of underground water storage but more abrupt. In addition, global anthropogenic forcing may cause much larger changes in local climate than global averages, but it is hard to quantitatively foretell them.<br /><br />So we can use this example to persuade people to reduce our total ecological footprint (use of fossil water is certainly included), but not to reduce our carbon emission.Kooiti Masudahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15709237727441869109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-59626020582624863322011-05-09T16:29:03.880-07:002011-05-09T16:29:03.880-07:00Very interesting, and the full report looks to be ...Very interesting, and the full report looks to be more so. Re the groundwater in particular, there were GRACE results ~6 months ago detailing a fast draw-down of Gujarat (fossil) groundwater. The Indian government had been extremely uninterested in the subject and seemed to be less than welcoming of the results. We saw something similar re CA groundwater, where the rural water districts have been very, very bored with the subject of groundwater depletion. Who would want to see such data, after all?<br /><br />From my own all-too-extensive (although fortunately not recent) experience with Iowa summers, the point about the dew seems right. The hottest days seemed to engender lots of night ground fog in the river bottoms and lots of dew in the coldest hour just before dawn. The dew carried some serious moisture, enough to keep tall corn pretty wet for the bulk of the following day. Nights following relatively cool days didn't see much of these effects.Steve Bloomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12943109973917998380noreply@blogger.com