Posted on 02/18/2022 2:52:10 PM PST by blam
Images of dry lake beds, scorched forests and charred buildings, and drought-stricken farmland from the American West have been published in newspapers worldwide as a megadrought intensifies. Many have wondered just how severe the current drought is, and perhaps, that question can be answered in a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
A new peer-reviewed study titled “Rapid intensification of the emerging southwestern North American megadrought in 2020–2021” says the last 22-year dry period is the worst since the Vikings and Mayans ruled parts of the world, or about 1,200 years ago.
“Anyone who has been paying attention knows that the west has been dry for most of the last couple decades,” Park Williams, a climate scientist at the University of California and the study’s lead author, told the Guardian.
Park used tree-ring records to reconstruct summer soil moisture content across centuries and allowed the researcher to believe the current low soil moisture is on par with moisture dating back to the year 800. He also said the conditions would likely persist through 2022.
“Rather than starting to die away after wet years in 2017 and 2019, the 2000s drought has ramped up with authority in 2020-2021, making clear that it’s now as strong as it ever was,” Park said, adding “there is evidence that the 2000s drought is starting to relent.”
We have published countless weather notes and the state of the drought in the western half of the US for years. One of the most damning pictures we’ve reported is Great Salt Lake’s progression of dwindling water levels over the last 35 years.
The situation has been worsening over the last few years as several major reservoirs are quickly drying up, forcing people to evacuate their boats and causing hydroelectric plants to shutter due to not having enough water to spin turbines.
Here are some of those images of dried-up lake beds.
According to data from the US Drought Monitor, the current state of the western half of the US is under a severe drought.
An unrelenting megadrought that is drying up lakes should be a major concern to lakefront homeowners who still have water left — maybe now is the time to sell before your oasis transforms into a desert.
For the record, the author has been at this for awhile:
posted here in 2020:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3835981/posts
Who is Seth Borenstein?
“ADJUNCT PROFESSOR: New York University, Washington DC campus Member: Society of Environmental Journalists; Investigative Reporters and Editors.”
& AP “science” writer.
And then there’s this:
Seth Borenstein: Portrait Of A Master Climate Propagandist Masquerading As A Journalist
But let’s keep on posting his garbage here repeatedly.
Yeah. /s
Fear not Biden is allowing millions of illegals in to end the mega drought he has a plan.
The democrats solution in California is to release most of the stored water in reservoirs into the ocean.
This topic was posted , thanks blam.
“... everyone knows that the west has been dry for most of the last couple decades....”
He’s right. It was just boring driving through endless hundreds of square miles of rice paddies in Utah and Nevada when I drove down to Las Vegas 40 years ago.
I drove to the old home place on the High Plains back in 2013. I lived there in 1947-1952, but didn’t recognize it as there was strange stuff all around that was not there when I was young.
Then I realized it was GREEN GRASS! What a shock! First time I EVER saw that area GREEN or with grass!
People can move out of the desert SW and move to the NE where there is plenty of water and plenty of liberals.
1200 years of rain fall data? Probably from tree rings. They showed a mega-drought in the 4-Corners area of AZ-NM-Colorado-Utah back in 1275-1300 AD. No coal fired power plants or SUVs involved.
The Great Salt Lake was once a part of the larger Lake Bonneville which has been drying up for thousands of years.
Two hundred years ago, the American West was not called THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT for nothing.
I really miss being in bone chilling frigged weather in the North and NE, with brown snow, teeth chattering cold and I especially liked the gloomy feel and not seeing the sun for days/weeks at time. And then summer, with wonderful dripping humidity....
Really.
Back in the last glacial advance 12,000 years ago all of the water was stuck in the ice, so the earth had little rainfall and most of it was arid.
I was going to say “during the last ice age”, but technically we are still in “the ice age”, just in one of the warm periods. (There have been 4 or 5 glacial advances over the last 100,000 years or whatever.)
Global warming (which is caused by natural changes obviously) at this point in earth's climate history will cause some changes but not devastating that we can't adapt to.
Another “ice age” would have devastating effects on water and crops. And with starving people all over the world that will cause wars to break out. Some debate on how slow or rapid another ice age could get real bad before it had real effects.
Some say it would take 1,000 years before it would be noticeable. Others say just a few years.
That was last January.
Once the springtime melt season hit, most of the snow evaporated (sublimated) and blew away; very little of it made it to the rivers.
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