U.S. Droughts in the Coming Century will be the Worst in 1000 Years - Scientific American and NASA
Adam Rifkin stashed this in Climate Change!
Stashed in: Science!, America!, NASA, Weather, We Are Doomed, Calamaties
That's right, it gets EVEN WORSE sometime in the next 20-50 years.
Several independent studies in recent years have predicted that the American Southwest and central Great Plains will experience extensive droughts in the second half of this century, and that advancing climate change will exacerbate those droughts. But a new analysis released today says the drying will be even more extreme than previously predicted—the worst in nearly 1,000 years. Some time between 2050 and 2100, extended drought conditions in both regions will become more severe than the megadroughts of the 12th and 13th centuries. Tree rings and other evidence indicate that those medieval dry periods exceeded anything seen since, across the land we know today as the continental U.S.
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Yeah science:
Scientists taking a hard look at America’s climate future foresee long-lasting droughts later in this century unlike any in the last thousand years. The primary blame belongs to global warming from human activities, according to a study released today in the new open-access journal Science Advances.
Climate forecasts for the whole globe are well established. The scientific community accepts that when you consider the planet as a single pixel, adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere inevitably makes the world hotter.
However, climate forecasts for smaller regions of the world– like individual continents– are more of a cutting-edge exercise. Models differ and uncertainties are important. But in this new study a team of three climate scientists—Benjamin Cook (NASA), Toby Ault (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) and Jason Smerdon (Cornell)—made regional forecasts that project intense drying in two large parts of the U.S.: the Central Plains and the Southwest.
Cook’s team started by taking a group of 17 leading computer climate models and running simulations of the climate from 1931 through 2099 that include rising average temperatures. They generated two alternative futures: 1) a “business-as-usual” simulation in which nothing much changes in our global greenhouse gas emissions; and 2) a more moderate scenario in which we make some progress in shrinking emissions.
They asked the models specifically to predict the level of moisture in the soil in the Central Plains and the Southwest. They used three different measures, including the Palmer Drought Severity Index. The PDSI is used by many agencies and is a common target in modeling studies. (After three years of scant rains, the Bay Area is sitting at a PDSI value below –4, or extreme drought.)
Cook’s team ran the models a thousand times and determined the statistically best results, the so-called Monte Carlo technique. The results are consistent: more heat and greater evaporation mean less water in the soil. For the second half of this century, the results point to a state of unrelenting severe drought.
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3:31 AM Feb 13 2015