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Floods,
Droughts, and Climate Change
by Michael Collier and Robert H. Webb University of Arizona Press, 2002 |
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| Science writer Michael Collier and research hydrologist Robert Webb collaborated on this compact study of how weather-related natural disasters are created and interrelated. | Drought is more than a simple lack of rainfall. Drought is a persistent moisture deficiency below long-term average conditions that, on average, balance precipitation and evapotranspiration in a given area.... | ||
| The prospects for significant climate change, and the impact this will have on the weather and people exposed to it, are considered in the context of global warming. "As the world's population continues to grow, the rhythm of flood and drought is transformed from a natural climatic pattern to a series ot crises that threaten more and more people," the authors point out. "Despite all our machinations, climate-related impacts incurred tolls in 1998 that were 50 percent higher than those of any previous year. As more humans populate the world, we find ourselves increasingly dependent on both hard and soft systems of disaster aversion. And we leave ourselves with progressively less room to maneuver within the reality of environmental variability." | Floods don't just happen because it rains. Floods happen because rain falls on saturated ground, because warm rain falls on an existing snowpack, because rain falls heavily throughout an entire basin, or because the basin has been changed (either naturally or otherwise) so as to retain or heightenfloodwaters that would have otherwise rolled on through without making a mess. .. | ||
| A useful inroductory text for students of climatology or meteorology, as well as general readers and decision-makers, this book explains the big picture behind lots of local disasters. | Also by
Michael
Collier:
Water,
Earth, and Sky: The Colorado River Basin
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