US to face 'mega-drought' in 21st century: Study
Large parts of the US will experience a "mega-drought" during the second half of the century, far worse than any drought experienced over the last 1,000 years due to climate change, according to a newly published study.
Some time between 2050 and 2100, the Southwestern and Great Plains region of the US will likely face decade-long droughts, scientists from NASA, Columbia University, and Cornell University reported in a study published Thursday in the journal Science Advances.
"These mega-droughts during the 1100s and 1200s persisted for 20, 30, 40, 50 years at a time, and they were droughts that no-one in the history of the United States has ever experienced," said Ben Cook from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Places like California are already facing very dry conditions. According to the US Drought Monitor, 11 of the past 14 years have seen drought in much of the American West, from California across to Texas and Oklahoma.
Previous research has already shown that the Southwest and the Great Plains (a broad swathe of land covering much of the Central US) will dry because of rising temperatures due to climate change.
“The 21st-century projections make the [previous] mega-droughts seem like quaint walks through the garden of Eden,” said Jason Smerdon, a co-author and climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
“We haven’t seen this kind of prolonged drought even certainly in modern US history,” Smerdon said. “What this study has shown is the likelihood that multi-decade events comprising year after year after year of extreme dry events could be something in our future.”
The study, called Unprecedented 21st-Century Drought Risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains, is the first time researchers found future droughts would be far worse even than those seen over the millennia.
The researchers used data derived from tree rings, whose growth patterns show the effects of dry and wet years, sampled across North America, and soil moisture, rainfall and evaporation records, and 17 climate models to study the effects of future temperature rise on the region.
AHT/AGB
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