Tim Barnett, Scripps Geophysicist Dies at 83

Tim Barnett, Scripps Geophysicist Who Led First Wave of El Niño Forecasting and Foretold Demise of Western Reservoirs, Dies at 83. Tim Barnett, a research marine geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego who made climate models become reliable as predictive tools, died Aug. 12 at his home in San Diego, Calif. He was 83. Barnett was already established as a pioneer who incorporated mathematics and statistical methodology into seasonal forecasts when in 2008, a prophetic paper he co-authored garnered the attention of international media. The study , bluntly titled "When will Lake Mead go dry'," predicted a 50 percent chance that Lake Mead, a key source of water for millions of people in the southwestern United States, would be dry by 2021 if the pace of climate change continued and future water usage were not curtailed. That study and a 2009 follow-up paper shocked the public and resource managers in the Southwest alike by providing specific dates when conditions would become dire and predicted specific water shortfall amounts under various scenarios.