Midwest Is Getting Wetter

Stuart Staniford on the Palmer Drought Severity Index:

You can see that the US is getting wetter - with the exception of parts of the Pacific coast - but most of the rest of the globe is drying out.  The absolute values of the change are large - those pink-red regions are changes of 3-4 PDSI units in 50 years - implying that what was a severe drought fifty years ago is the new normal.  The drying is most pronounced in Canada, the Mediterranean, Northern China, and in the world's tropical forests.  If you look - the Amazon, Central Africa, India, and Indo-China are all drying out.  This obviously raises concerns: the tropical forests are where most of the global carbon capture by the biosphere occurs.

My main agricultural concerns about climate change involve how they will impact growing conditions locally.  Heavy clay soils in Ohio won't do extremely well if the region in gradually becoming wetter.  This year's La Nina gave us an extremely wet spring and fall, and a very dry July and August.  It was definitely subpar, although some of the heavier soils actually benefited because the soil stored water for plant use during that dry spell.  I've been curious whether climate change will impact the El Nino/La Nina pattern over time, but I haven't heard anyone mention it yet.  Climate change could seriously impact the value of the land farmers have been paying so much for.