Can Droughts Now Be Predicted?
Thursday, May 15, 2014 - 10:10
in Earth & Climate
The weather is big news. No matter what is happening, too little or too much, someone is talking about that and then linking it to long-term climate disruption. The UN IPCC says not do to that, but if people will anyway, the big question is; how much accuracy is possible? Rainfall is important and therefore a topic of intense debate. While we historically haven't been able predict it, we can use modern weather satellites to monitor it, and so that has become a widely-practiced technique. That is not without pitfalls. Yet how accurate are claims about past rainfall? And can satellites do better? Establishing a reliable context for rainfall observations to current and historical ground-based rainfall data has been difficult. read more