The Western U.S. Is Experiencing the Worst Drought in More Than 1,200 Years
Human-caused climate change is responsible for 42 percent of the soil moisture deficit in the last 22 years, a new study finds
Margaret Osborne
Contributor
February 17, 2022
The current megadrought in the western United States has broken previous records for the driest 22-year period in the region since the year 800 C.E., a new study published in Nature Climate Change shows. The drought has been exacerbated by human-caused climate change and is likely to continue for at least another year, the authors found.
“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,” study lead author Park Williams, a climate hydrologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, tells Seth Borenstein for the Associated Press. “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 authors analyzed data from tree ring patterns for information about soil moisture over the years, and confirmed their measurements against historical climate data.
“Every year, a tree grows an annual growth ring, and in a wet year, the ring will be really wide because the tree grows a lot," Williams tells KCRA’s Heather Waldman. "In a dry year, the tree grows a little bit.”
More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-western-us-is-experiencing-the-worst-megadrought-in-more-than-1200-years-180979590/
