New Study Finds A 90% Chance Of A Severe 10-Year Drought In The US Southwest
Becky Oskin
BusinessInsider.com
Sept. 5,2014
The Southwest faces a dry and dusty forecast, with a 90 percent chance of a decade-long drought searing southern regions of Arizona and New Mexico this century, if global greenhouse gas emissions stay the same.
The drought risk for southern portions of California and Nevada is nearly as great, with an 80 percent chance of a decade-long drought by 2100. California is already in the midst of an extreme drought. In 2014, the water shortage is expected to cost the state a total of $2.2 billion, including agricultural losses, according to a recent study from the University of California, Davis.
The U.S. Southwest has always suffered droughts. Tree rings and other historical records show one or two of these 10-year dry spells strike every century, such as in the 1950s. But computer models predict that climate change will tweak this historical drought pattern. Thanks to global warming, the Southwest is transitioning to a hotter and drier local climate, with less rain and snow, studies show. [The Worst Droughts in US History]
“A drier Southwest is also a Southwest at risk of a megadrought,” said Toby Ault, a climate scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and lead author of the new study, published Aug. 28 in the Journal of Climate Science.
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