© Rich Pedroncelli, APA warning buoy sits on the dry, cracked bed of Lake Mendocino on Feb 4, 2014. near Ukiah, Calif. Megadroughts could plague much of the USA because of the climate change, according to the study.
Megadroughts, which are defined as intense droughts that last for decades or longer, once plagued western North America. Now, thanks in part to global warming, an especially fierce one is back.
Comment: It is now well known fact that a global warming is just a fiction. At the same time it is true that the climate of all other planets in the solar system is changing. No one is burning fossil fuels on Mars or Venus.
The study, published Monday in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature Climate Change, said that more than 40% of the drought can be blamed on human-caused climate change.
Dry January increases California droughThe water contained in California's mountain snow is now lower that the historical average after a January without rain or snow. (Feb.1) AP.
"Climate change is changing the baseline conditions toward a drier, gradually drier state in the West, and that means the worst-case scenario keeps getting worse," said study lead author Park Williams, a climate hydrologist at UCLA. "This is right in line with what people were thinking of in the 1900s as a worst-case scenario. But today I think we need to be even preparing for conditions in the future that are far worse than this."
The Southwest is in the middle of the megadrought: Here's how it got there
The Southwest is the driest it's been since the late 1500s. Here's why this megadrought could be felt harder than it ever has before.
JUST THE FAQS, USA TODAYClimate change from the burning of fossil fuels is bringing hotter temperatures and increasing evaporation in the air, scientists say.
Comment: The earth climate is actually getting colder, not warmer. Global warming scam is a quasi-scientific dogma for collecting more taxpayers money and imposing drastic measures, so they could gain more control.
Thanks to the region's high temperatures and low rain and snow levels from summer 2020 through summer 2021, the drought has exceeded the severity of a late-1500s megadrought that had been identified as the worst such drought in the 1,200 years the scientists studied.
The researchers calculated the intensity of past droughts by analyzing tree ring patterns, which provide insights about soil moisture levels each year over time.
As of Feb. 10, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 95% of the western U.S. was experiencing drought conditions. And in summer 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, two of the largest reservoirs in North America - Lake Mead and Lake Powell, both on the Colorado River - reached their lowest recorded levels.
The study "is an important wake-up call," said Jonathan Overpeck, dean of environment at the University of Michigan, who wasn't part of the study.
"Climate change is literally baking the water supply and forests of the Southwest, and it could get a whole lot worse if we don't halt climate change soon."
I wonder just how much fossil fuels were being used back in the late-1500s that caused that megadrought? If it isn't a man-made climate effect (somebody's got a big ego), then it may be just a natural cycle that the environment goes through that has nothing to do with what human beings do or don't do. I'd be curious to see what the study showed for the late-1100s and how big a drought existed at that time, if it is actually cyclical.