Drought As A Natural Phenomenon

Droughts are caused a number of different ways. Changes in wind patterns move the clouds and moisture through the atmosphere, which can result in an area having abnormal amounts of rain or snow over an extended period of time. 4.4 million acre-feet of water from the Colorado River is entitled to California annually. In areas where most water used comes from rivers, droughts can be caused from places upstream that are not getting enough moisture. In many cases, humans play a big role in droughts. Excessive use of water during times of regular rainfall lead to not having enough water during droughts. Chopping down trees makes it tough for soil

Women’s Rugby League in Australia constantly growing, and the New South Wales Rugby League took notice after the NSW team broke a 17-year-drought against Queensland earlier in the year, by setting a five year pathway plan to increase participation levels and equality in sport.

Here in the desert we all know it’s a very dry place. You may also know that California is in a drought as well and the dryness of our area has resulted in many continuous disadvantages. People are conserving water as much as they can but maybe some of you out there are not doing your part in saving our water and I am here to tell you it is so simple! But first, let me provide some facts on the drought in California that should help you realize the dire situation we are in.

Between 1930’s and 1940’s, a great drought hit the southern west Great Plains. “Dryland farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie grasses.”(Congress). It affected farmers by destroying their crops. “Simply put, if farmers produced less, the prices of their crops and livestock would increase.”(Congress). In a way, the farmers were paid less. “In a time when many were out of work and tens of thousands were starving, this wastefulness was considered downright wrong.”(Congress). Without crops to feed people, people were starving. “Cotton, corn and wheat prices doubled in three years.”(Congress) Farmers approved this act.

Drought is a deficiency in precipitation over an extended period of time. They are very unpredictable as some are more extreme, some last for months and some persist for years including some severe examples in Australia, which lasted over 10 years. These long periods with water shortages can have an adverse impact on the environment, including vegetation, animals and people. Further drought can occur in virtually all climate zones; whether in the blazing dessert of Australia or the wet, tropical Indonesian coast. Finally due to the wide spread difference in climates around the world a drought can be very different. For example what is conceived a drought in Bali (6 days without water) would defiantly not be a drought in Libya (annual

There is an alarming situation emerging in the Southwestern United States where record setting drought conditions persist and the forecast for the future warns of continued drought conditions. Effects of the drought are as visible as they are alarming; Lake Mead, one of the largest reservoirs in this region is well below its high water mark leaving officials to wondering how they can continue to provide both water and electricity to the region. According to the National Climate Assessment 2014, ninety-two percent of this region uses irrigation to water crops accounting for seventy-nine percent of the water withdrawals (Garfin). In addition, a study by NASA concludes droughts in the Southwest United States may be longer and drier than previous droughts in the last one thousand years (Cole). The ongoing drought in the Southwestern United States is driving water reserves to dangerously low levels, adversely affecting an agricultural system that will have ripple effects throughout the entire country, unless the farmers of this region can learn to farm without water they may not survive.5

Droughts are a natural occurrence that has been around for millions of years. Droughts are unpredictable; no one can tell when they are going to take place, the severity, or how long they will last. Impacts on of a drought can send shockwaves thought the region. The economy, agriculture, the environment, and the residents of the region are all affected. (Vicente-Serrano, Beguería, & López-Moreno, 2009, p.1696)

Californian have been in a drought for the last few years. “A drought is a period of drier-than-normal conditions that results in water-related problems. When rainfall is less than normal for several weeks, months, or years, the flow of streams and rivers declines, water levels in lakes and reservoirs fall, and the depth to water in wells increases” defined in website http://ca.water.usgs.gov/data/drought/. Since California have been in a drought for few year, many resident lack of water and having problem issue in health, economic, and living condition. Water is important to our life, we can’t without water in three days.

There have been droughts severe droughts around the world infact you have an example. “Australia has just come through a thirteen-year duration of drought it was catastrophic in that country. The way that they delt with it was, believe it or not, was concerving water and rain water harvesting. It wasn’t all the high teck stuff and yet we here in California need a desalinization plant. I mean it does help. But the main strength in what they accomplished in that country of ausralia was the fact that the worked together they reduced their water reduction through concervation practices and they put up tank systems on their properties to collect rain water from their gutters. That’s how they did it.”

Drought is a period of below average rainfall in a specified region resulting in prolonged shortages in its water supply. Drought in the West is a long-lasting concept where a single dry year does not make a drought. Drought is a big problem because it leads to plant dying and when the plants die the animals also die because they have nothing to eat. Which leads people to die because they lack food. California and Arizona are currently suffering from a drought problem.

The impacts of climate change on drought attributes continue to be debated in the scientific community, even as multiple regions, globally and in the United States, experience severe droughts. Drought is a recurrent problem in many parts of the Conterminous United States (CONUS). Heat waves and droughts alone caused damage of around $210.1 billion dollars during 1980-2011 in the United States and ranked second highest after tropical cyclones in terms of financial losses (Smith and Katz, 2013). Droughts are difficult to characterize because of complex interdependence among various drought attributes, such as severity (magnitude), duration, spatial coverage, frequency and persistence. In a design context, assumption of complete independence or

Drought, like a destructing earthquake or flood, is a natural disaster. Drought is an insidious hazard to nature. It results from a deficiency of precipitation over a long period of time over an area. Precipitation is any kind of moisture like rain, snow, and sleet. One can determine how malicious a drought can be by the amount of precipitation, and how long it is (Gleick, 2006).

Drought is another factor of climate change that causes severe damages to agriculture and livestock. The effects of drought on agricultural production and livestock holding can be a detrimental issue and result in quality dissatisfaction of products. The agricultural industry can be affected by drought both economically and environmentally. The economical effects of drought on crops and animals can lead to the loss of money and time. When droughts occur farmers lose money because they will have to spend more money earned from their

Drought is a natural hazard due to adverse climatic changes which affects various sectors like environment, society and economy. It occurs not only because of the scarcity of rainfall but also due to the inefficient water resource management. Studies indicate that over 30% of the entire land surface of earth is affected by drought. As a developing country, majority of Indian population depends directly or indirectly on agriculture. So the abnormal monsoon precipitation, causing loss of agricultural production, can highly influence the human life. In this paper, Karur district in Tamil Nadu which often has a very low annual rainfall is taken as the study area for drought monitoring. The technological evolution in remote sensing over the past few decades has opened a new era in the field of drought monitoring. Thus, use of remote sensing and GIS helps in developing early warnings about drought conditions which will be useful for planning the strategies for relief work. Drought analysis can be performed by calculating different drought indices like Standard Precipitation Index (SPI), Standardized Water Level Index (SWI) and Normalized Differences Vegetation Index (NDVI).Rainfall data from 2000-2009 is used to compute the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) in different time scales which is used in meteorological drought monitoring. Standardized Water Level Index (SWI) obtained from ground water level data is used for the hydrological drought analysis.

In this study, we conceptualize drought propagation as a cascading phenomenon that begins with rainfall deficits and proceeds through the hydrological cycle as shown in Fig. 2. As the drought proceeds, its impacts on associated or dependent societal and agro-ecological systems accumulated (or ensues in worst critical or complex condition) as shown in Fig. 3. Consequently, we have elected to use the framework of “diseases burden” to elucidate the cumulative drought effects. According to Begg et al., 2007 and Mathers et al., 2007, disease burden framework is a standardized measurement framework that permits comparison across diseases and injuries, as well as risk factors.