'Worse Than Anything Seen in 2,000 Years' as Megadrought Threatens Western States [View all]

[adirondacker]

New study indicates chances are increasingly high that California and other states could be facing a water crisis without compare
by
Jon Queally, staff writer

"A new study warns that the chances of western states in the U.S. experiencing a multi-decade 'megadrought'—not seen in historical climate records in over 2,000 years—has a much higher chance of occurring in the decades ahead than previously realized. In fact, scientists are warning, the drought now being experienced in California and elsewhere could be just the beginning of an unprecedented water crisis across the west and southwest regions of the country.

The research—a project between scientists at Cornell University, the University of Arizona, and the U.S. Geological Survey—shows that chances for a decade-long drought this century is now at fifty-fifty, and that a drought lasting as long as 35 years—defined as a "megadrought"—has a twenty- to fifty-percent chance of occurring.

“For the southwestern U.S., I’m not optimistic about avoiding real megadroughts,” Toby Ault, Cornell assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences and lead author of the paper, told the Cornell Chronicle. “As we add greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – and we haven’t put the brakes on stopping this – we are weighting the dice for megadrought.”

And if such a megadrought does occur, warned Ault, "This will be worse than anything seen during the last 2,000 years.”

And as USA Today notes, "The difference now, of course, is the Western USA is home to more than 70 million people who weren't here for previous megadroughts. The implications are far more daunting.""
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http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/09/03/worse-anything-seen-2000-years-megadrought-threatens-western-states