{"id":22006,"date":"2016-10-16T12:21:12","date_gmt":"2016-10-16T17:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22006"},"modified":"2016-10-16T12:21:12","modified_gmt":"2016-10-16T17:21:12","slug":"considering-the-coming-megadrought-in-the-american-southwest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22006","title":{"rendered":"Considering the Coming Megadrought in the American Southwest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Considering the Coming Megadrought in the American Southwest<\/a><\/h3>\n
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<\/a><\/div>\n
Drought status in the U.S. as of 2015. Note the color-coded legend in the lower-right portion of the graphic (source<\/a>; click to enlarge)<\/i><\/div>\n

I’ve written in the past about two of the most climate-vulnerable regions of the U.S., Florida and the American Southwest. (A third region, the Pacific Northwest, is vulnerable, but to a non-climate event, a\u00a0magnitude 9.0 mega-earthquake<\/a>.) Here I want to look again to the problems of California and the Southwest.<\/p>\n

Much of the water that sustains California, southern Nevada, Arizona, and surrounding areas comes from the ever-drying Colorado River. Just as it’s now clear that we’ve\u00a0passed the tipping point for extreme weather<\/a>, we’re also very likely passed the\u00a0tipping point<\/a>\u00a0for the long-term habitability of the American Southwest.<\/p>\n

The report is from NASA; the\u00a0write-up<\/a>\u00a0is from EcoWatch (my emphasis):<\/p>\n

NASA: Megadrought Lasting Decades Is 99% Certain in American Southwest<\/b><\/p>\n

A study released in\u00a0Science Advances<\/a>\u00a0Wednesday finds strong evidence for severe, long-term\u00a0droughts<\/a>\u00a0afflicting the American Southwest, driven by\u00a0climate change<\/a>.\u00a0A\u00a0megadrought<\/a>\u00a0lasting decades is 99 percent certain<\/b>\u00a0to hit the region this century, said scientists from Cornell University, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.<\/p>\n

“Historically, megadroughts were extremely rare phenomena occurring only once or twice per millennium,” the report states. “According to our analysis of modeled responses to increased GHGs, these events could become commonplace if climate change goes unabated.”<\/p>\n

Rising temperatures<\/a>\u00a0will combine with decreased rainfall in the Southwest to create droughts that will be worse than the historic “Dust Bowl<\/a>” of the 20th century and last far longer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Considering the Coming Megadrought in the American Southwest Drought status in the U.S. as of 2015. Note the color-coded legend in the lower-right portion of the graphic (source; click to enlarge) I’ve written in the past about two of the most climate-vulnerable regions of the U.S., Florida and the American Southwest. (A third region, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[14464,101,14463,220,12914,827],"class_list":["post-22006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-american-southwest","tag-california","tag-down-with-tyranny","tag-drought","tag-gaius-publius","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22007,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22006\/revisions\/22007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}