AccuWeather Vice President of Forecast Operations Dan DePodwin and AccuWeather Climate Expert Brett Anderson discuss the top headlines related to climate change in the November 21 edition of Climate In The News.
00:00A drought-themed climate in the news today. We'll start, Brett, with an ABC News article about California specifically and a really pioneering study that links wildlife interactions with the very significant drought in recent years.
00:15Yeah, so back in 2012, we had a start of a massive drought across California. It lasted through 2016, the most severe drought on record. And we're seeing more extreme long-term drought across California. And what is this doing? This is impacting wildlife. Water is becoming scarce. And so what do they do? They're looking for more water. And where do you look? Where humans are.
00:37Yeah, this paper was done by Science Advances. And it's really the first time it seems that scientists have combined two different data sets, the environmental data set of how much rain has fallen with the amount of wildlife interactions in terms of just different conflicts that arose. And there are certain species, there were 60 species looked at, but a few of them stood out as the most impacted.
00:57Yeah, we saw mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes. So with less water, fewer plants to eat. And so many of these animals are actually attacking livestock. This is having a huge toll.
01:10And this seems like it will only increase in the future, right?
01:12This will only increase in the future, unfortunately, as droughts, especially across the western United States, become much more extreme in the long term.
01:18Yeah, so certainly a new area of study found here in this latest scientific paper. Our second story today is from New Scientist. And it focuses on Iran, which has had a significant drought over the last several years.
01:35And the water shortage has become really dire with it and may even force evacuations of Tehran at some point.
01:41Yeah, 15% of normal rainfall so far this year in Tehran, Iran, which is the home to 10 million people. Dryest autumn in 50 years. So this is, again, this is the sixth year in a row.
01:54Desperate situation there. Reservoirs under 5% capacity. And so if we don't see any rain in the next month or so, they may have to evacuate some people.
02:04That's a serious situation. Iran itself is a fairly dry country overall. It's a pretty arid region.
02:09It seems like that's going to grow more common with climate change. And it seems like there also may be some impact in terms of the poor resource management with the water.
02:18So I guess what are people doing about this in Iran? It seems like a pretty big problem to try to solve. But one of the things they've identified is potentially cloud seeding.
02:25Yeah, cloud seeding is a one possibility. But again, it's controversial, certainly. And again, Iran's a very large country.
02:31But cloud seeding basically involves silver iodide, for instance, provides a landing pad for water droplets to freeze and form ice particles, which eventually fall into snow and then rain.
02:45But again, that's a very small scale situation there. And it's hard to fathom that's going to work.
02:51Yeah, and it seems like from the studies, it's hard to sort of piece together how much cloud seeding helps.
02:56It seems like it may have increased overall 5% to 15%, but not a major impact.
03:00It's going to be very localized.
03:02Yeah, very localized. Not going to cause major flooding. So certainly looking to other solutions potentially in Iran.
03:08Thank you, Brett. For other stories about climate and information, you can find that at AccuWeather.com slash climate.
03:13Yes, obviously.
03:18Aww.
03:26Sure.
03:26That's where I want to make a solid point in.
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