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Amanda Royal's avatar

Hydroclimate whiplash is such a perfect term. Your post is a nice expansion on this Axios article, which mentioned Swain and his research in regards to the LA fires: https://www.axios.com/2025/01/12/la-fires-climate-change-drought-extreme-weather

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Richard Crim's avatar

Like you say, we have all lived through "boom and bust" weather cycles with water. We just didn't have a "fancy" term for them. "Hydroclimate Whiplash" isn't bad and conveys clearly that this is NOT a "good thing".

I thought it was interesting that they looked at +3°C of warming. Particularly considering that +3°C over baseline is now acknowledged by ALL of the factions in Climate Science as "inevitable".

The Moderates think the Rate of Warming is around +0.25°C/decade and we will reach +3°C around 2080. UNLESS we reach "net zero". They THEORIZE that warming will basically stop at that point at whatever temperature we have climbed to.

Hansen puts the RoW at around +0.32°C/decade. He forecasts +3°C between 2065 and 2070.

I think the RoW is going to be around +0.4°C/decade. I am forecasting +2°C between 2030 and 2035 with +3°C happening between 2055 and 2065 depending on accelerating feedbacks.

EVERYONE in Climate Science thinks +3°C this century is going to happen.

From the looks of these Hydroclimate Whiplash forecasts it's going to be a VERY different planet. One that's much, MUCH hungrier.

From the paper:

"At the global scale, 60% of land area is projected to experience accelerated transitions between dry and wet periods under a high warming scenario."

"The magnitude of these changes depends on the metric, method and warming scenario, but there are suggestions of 2.5× increases in globally averaged subseasonal precipitation whiplash and 5× increases in interannual dry-to-wet events over global land areas compared with the historical period."

"Additionally, hydrologically intense years are further projected to triple in major global river basins even under moderate warming".

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