How does rising atmospheric CO2 affect marine organisms?

Click to locate material archived on our website by topic


Historic Streamflow of the Southern Uinta Mountains
Reference
Carson, E.C and Munroe, J.S.  2005.  Tree-ring based streamflow reconstruction for Ashley Creek, northeastern Utah: Implications for palaeohydrology of the southern Uinta Mountains.  The Holocene 15: 602-611.

What was done
The authors utilized tree-ring data collected in a previous study by Stockton and Jacoby (1976) from the Uinta Mountains of Utah to reconstruct mean annual discharge in the Ashley Creek watershed for the period 1637 to 1970.

What was learned
Significant persistent departures from the long-term mean were noted throughout the 334-year record of reconstructed streamflow.  The periods 1637-1691 and 1741-1897 experienced reduced numbers of extremely large flows and increased numbers of extremely small flows, indicative of persistent drought or near-drought conditions.  In contrast, there was an overall abundance of extremely large flows and relatively few extremely small flows during the periods 1692-1740 and 1898-1945, indicative of wetter conditions.

What it means
These results provide yet another indication of the cyclical nature of climate.  They also provide evidence for the existence of past periods of extreme wetness and dryness with accompanying floods and droughts, which - if one or the other extreme climatic state were to begin today and persist for a while - would likely be blamed on CO2-induced global warming, when, in reality, it would even more likely be totally unrelated to what the air's CO2 content was doing, just as prior such episodes were.

Reference
Stockton, C.W. and Jacoby Jr., G.C.  1976.  Long-term surface-water supply and streamflow trends in the Upper Colorado River Basin based on tree-ring analysis.  Lake Powell Research Project Bulletin 18, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles.

Reviewed 16 November 2005