Climate Wake-Up Call: *Mayan Civilization Collapse & Extreme Drought* New Study [View all]

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"New Study On The Collapse of Mayan Civilization Should Be Climate Wake-Up Call Under Trump's Policies, The Megadrought That Devastated The Mayans Will Become The New Normal." By Joe Romm, Think Progress, Aug. 7, 2018. Excerpts:

A new study finds that it was a severe and long-lasting megadrought that destroyed the great Mayan civilization a thousand years ago. But the research has ominous relevance for us today since America’s top scientists have warned us that President Trump’s climate policies will make such civilization destroying megadroughts commonplace in the coming decades.

The Mayans had one of the world’s first written languages, used advanced mathematics, measured timed with an accurate calendar, produced durable rubber three millennia ago, and figured out “how to grow corn, beans, squash and cassava in sometimes-inhospitable places.”

Yet after reaching its height in its “Classic” period (250 AD – 800 AD), the Mayan empire collapsed over the next two hundred years. While many theories have been offered- including environmental degradation, war, and drought- researchers from Cambridge’s Godwin Laboratory for Palaeoclimate Research have shown that the collapse “correlated with an extended period of extreme drought.”

In a recent study published in the journal Science, “Quantification of Drought During the Collapse of the Classic Maya Civilization,” the researchers calculated for the first time just how bad the drought was. From 800 to 1000 AD, they found, “Annual rainfall must have fallen by around 50% on average and by up to 70% during peak drought conditions.”
In addition, “relative humidity dropped by 2% to 7%” compared to today..

This study is especially relevant today for two reasons:
First, America has already started experiencing warming-worsened droughts that are as bad as any drought seen in the past 1200 years. Second, climate scientists have shown that under current climate policies we face even worse multi-decade megadroughts. For instance, *here is a 2015 NASA projection (See Link) of what the normal climate of North America will look like on our current emissions path. The darkest areas have soil moisture comparable to that seen during the 1930s Dust Bowl.

We could see a severe megadrought lasting decades hitting both the California breadbasket and the Midwest breadbasket at the same time. Also, tens of millions of people in Mexico and Central America - (Mexico alone is projected to have a population of 150 million in 2050) - will be desperately trying to find a place to live that isn’t so hot and dry, and that has enough fresh water and food to go around. They aren’t going to be looking south (and, of course, their coastal cities will be inundated by accelerating sea level rise).

A couple million Syrian refugees has turned global politics upside-down in recent years. What happens when that is multiplied 10-fold? Or 50-fold? ..“Human adaptation to prolonged, extreme drought is difficult or impossible”...

Read More, https://thinkprogress.org/a-megadrought-destroyed-the-mayan-civilization-were-next-92e10dea33c5/

Related: "Once-in-1200-Year California Drought Bears Signature of Climate Change," Think Progress, Dec. 8, 2014.
https://thinkprogress.org/once-in-1200-year-california-drought-bears-signature-of-climate-change-33195982384c/



- Mayan civilization ruins, Quintana Roo, Mexico, February 2016.