Global Climate Change
May. 21st, 2009 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beth_meachamLike everyone else in southern Arizona today, I'm feeling bitchy about the rain. This is the fifth day of rain, and the worst. It's been raining here at my house since dawn, and there is no sign of it breaking up.
Now, rain in the desert is Good. We're down 3 inches for the year already, and when your average annual rainfall is 12 inches, being down by three is serious business. But it's May. High Summer -- the time of year when the season is supposed to be Hot and Dry. It's the time of year when you see day after day of 100 degree heat, the dragon roaring in a clear, bright sky.
I looked back at my journals, and see that it was raining in May last year, too. And the year before. So maybe what "supposed to be" isn't so any more. One of the earliest models of climate change I ever saw predicted that this area would return to grassland as global temperatures rose, as it was 20,000 years ago. That would require more rain...and maybe this is the beginning of it.
I guess maybe I'd better get used to it.
Now, rain in the desert is Good. We're down 3 inches for the year already, and when your average annual rainfall is 12 inches, being down by three is serious business. But it's May. High Summer -- the time of year when the season is supposed to be Hot and Dry. It's the time of year when you see day after day of 100 degree heat, the dragon roaring in a clear, bright sky.
I looked back at my journals, and see that it was raining in May last year, too. And the year before. So maybe what "supposed to be" isn't so any more. One of the earliest models of climate change I ever saw predicted that this area would return to grassland as global temperatures rose, as it was 20,000 years ago. That would require more rain...and maybe this is the beginning of it.
I guess maybe I'd better get used to it.