Report: Climate change is helping previously drought-stricken areas of Africa

Warmer is necessarily bad...

Via Daily Mail:

Climate change means rain is returning to previously drought-stricken areas of Africa exactly 30 years since Live Aid raised £150million to help starving people there, a new study has revealed.
A severe lack of rainfall during the 1970s and 80s led to a persistent drought and famine, killing more than 100,00 people in countries such as Ethiopia.
The crisis prompted singers Sir Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to organise the Live Aid concerts in July 1985 to raise cash for the relief fund.
But now research by scientists at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading, has shown how increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have caused climate change, have triggered a return of crucial seasonal rains to the Sahel region.

California dries up...

I hope this doesn't force the moonbats to move to other states.

Via The LA Times:

Gov. Jerry Brown, standing on a patch of brown grass in the Sierra Nevada that is usually covered with several feet of snow at this time of year, on Wednesday announced the first mandatory water restrictions in California history.
"It's a different world," he said. "We have to act differently."
Brown was on hand Wednesday as state officials took stock of historically abysmal levels of snowpack in the Sierra Nevada amid the state's grinding drought. It was the first time that a governor attended the measuring event, which has taken place at Lake Tahoe since 1942.
Brown ordered the California Water Resources Control Board to implement mandatory restrictions to reduce water usage by 25%. The water savings are expected to amount to 1.5 million acre-feet of water over the next nine months.

Climate Alarmists Heartache: Global Warming isn't behind California's drought.

California's drought is a natural event. 

Via Discovery

Climate change is usually discussed in extremes: Epic heat in Australia. A deadly heat wave in Europe. Hurricane Sandy grinding New York to a halt.
The extreme California drought? Maybe not so much.
A new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study released Monday shows that the three-year California drought may have been caused by natural variability and not necessarily human-caused climate change.
The study follows a series of studies released in September that were inconclusive about the role of climate change in the California drought, and another published last week showing that the drought is the worst the state has seen in 1,200 years.
The devastating 3-year drought, which began in 2011 and is ongoing despite recent rains, was caused by a high pressure system that was sitting over the West Coast and part of the North Pacific Ocean, driving moisture away from California, report co-author Richard Seager, a professor of oceanography at the Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., said.
The persistence of the high pressure ridge was also present in previous long-term droughts in California, some of which were longer than the current drought. The ridge was initially caused by cool sea surface temperatures in the Pacific brought about by a La Niña in 2011, but it persisted even after cool ocean surface temperatures began to warm, the study says.

Keep on reading

Obvious: NY Times admits California drought caused by lack of rain, not global warming...

Well, it's quickly obvious to rational people.It took the NY Times a while.

Via NY Times:

CALIFORNIA is now in the midst of the third year of one of its worst droughts on record. As our planet gradually warms from our rampant burning of fossil fuels, it’s only natural to wonder what role climate change has played in California’s troubles.
The answer is this: At present, the scientific evidence does not support an argument that the drought there is appreciably linked to human-induced climate change.
The drought has many attributes of historical droughts over that region — in particular, a lack of storms and rainfall that would normally arrive from the Pacific Ocean with considerable frequency. It resembles the droughts that afflicted the state in 1976 and 1977. Those years were at least as dry as the last two years have been for the state as a whole.
In short, the drought gripping California has been observed before. And it has occurred principally because of a lack of rain, not principally because of warmer temperatures. Indeed, it should be quite familiar to anyone who lived in California in the mid-1970s, as I did. We can also say with high confidence that no appreciable trend toward either wetter or drier conditions has been observed for statewide average precipitation since 1895. This drought is not part of a long-term drift toward reduced precipitation over the state.

Image of the Day: NOAA data proves Obama's claim of more droughts is a lie

In the chart below, negative indicates more drought. Clearly, we are having less drought since the 1930's.

Contiguous U.S., Palmer Modified Drought Index (PMDI), August-July 1896-2012 

Chart compiled from NOAA data by
Real Science.

Chart of the Day: Is rising temperature causing more droughts?

Here is a scatter graph of GISS temperature data (GISTEMP) and the U.S. Palmer Drought Severity Index with annual data through 2011.

Chart: Annual PDSI -vs- Annual Global GISTEMP – Source: Dr. Pat Michaels by way of WUWT. 

As you can see, there is no correlation at all. More info on understanding scatter graphs is here.