Was last week's flooding in North Dakota due to the dreaded global warming? That's what President Clinton said last week. And as it turns out, there is a link between the flooding and global warming. But it's not what the President had in mind.
According to The Washington Post, the National Weather Service (NWS) used computer modeling on February 27, 1997 to predict the Red River would crest at 49 feet. On April 14, the expected crest was raised to 50 feet. On April 16, it was raised to 50.5 feet; April 17, 52 feet; the morning of April 18, 53 feet; and by the evening of April 18, the predicted crest became 54 feet.
Until April 18, the NWS modelers had not adequately accounted for the sandbag levees that area residents had built to protect their homes. These levees altered the shape of the channel so the procedure to judge the height of the river was inaccurate.
The NWS said that the crest projection process was also stymied because many U.S. Geological Service gauges didn't work, water ran round others and the computer had never analyzed a crest above 48.8 feet.
According to the NWS
We can base computer models on things that have happened in the past. But when you have a [new] event, there are a lot of possibilities. It's all based on what's happened before.
Doesn't this fill you with confidence about the forecast of global warming, which depends on computer modeling? How can the global warming crowd predict (with a straight face) global temperature increases into the next century when we can't even predict the cresting of a river? Isn't modeling global climate change orders of magnitude more complex than modeling river crests?
I guess if they ever run out of sand for levees, they can always get it from the heads of those who think they can model global climate change.
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