WEBVTT FILE

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(Reporter) Well it's been a tale of two extremes this year for the United States.

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Severe drought has plagued places in the west coast, like California.

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Also Texas has seen severe drought, but

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recently southern California and Texas got rain. Does that mean

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those droughts are over? Here to tell use more is Dr. Ben Cook

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at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, thanks for joining us. (Cook) Thanks for having me.

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(Reporter) So its been a year of extreme weather in the United States. What are the NASA

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satellites showing us? (Cook) Well NASA has a fleet of twenty Earth Observing Satellites

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constantly taking measurements of the land surface, the oceans and the atmospheres and

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one of our most recent satellites is the Global Precipitation Measuring Mission launched in

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2014 and what it's been able to show is really the extreme nature of

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rainfall over this last year over North America. In the image here we are looking at

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accumulated precipitation from January through June of this year. What you can see is the

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exceptional wetness in the eastern half of the United States.

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Including record rainfall and record droughts in Texas contrasting with west

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which has received very little rainfall constant with the ongoing droughts there.

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(Reporter) In the last couple of months, Texas and Southern California both experienced

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heavy rain after years of drought, does that mean those droughts are now over?

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(Cook) In the case of Texas by any indicator the drought is over

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but the thing to remember is that in Texas it was a multi-year long drought

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that really took an extreme, in fact wettest May on record to wipe it out

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in a single month. In the case of California, the news is maybe not so good.

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Hurricane Delores is only a drop in the bucket of the total amount

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water that has been lost, as shown here in the great satellite which measures

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total changes in ground water, surface water and

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snow cover. So in California we can expect to seethe drought continuing

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for at least another year and maybe some improvement this fall.

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(Reporter) Strong El-Nino in the Pacific ocean, what impact

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could that have? (Cook) Right now a moderate to strong is developing

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which means warm water is piling up in the eastern tropical Pacific

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and when this happens the jet streams over North America and many other parts of the globe

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get shifted. In the case of North America what that means, we can expect more

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winter storms come into Southern California and the south west and Texas

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so its very likely or hopeful that we'll see some drought improvement

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in those areas. Unfortunately with El-Nino there's winners and losers and so other

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places like the Amazon and Indonesia can expect much drier

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conditions this coming year and potentially big fires.

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(Reporter) Can we expect these types of extreme events in the future?

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(Cook) As we start to warm the planet we can expect the hydraulic cycle

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basically get super charged which means that both the

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dry and wet extremes are going to get more intense and more frequent. Over North America

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what we are seeing of all our state of the art model projections

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is the tendency towards increase drought in the future as precipetation patterns

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and as warming up the atmosphere

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starts to dry out the soils. Fore sure for most of western

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America expect to see a steady trend towards to drier and drier conditions

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(Reporter) And where can we learn more? (Cook) nasa.gov/earth

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(Reporter) Thank you so much for joining us. (Cook) Thank You.