Megadroughts, persisting for decades at a time, parched the Southwestern U.S. centuries ago between 800 CE and 1600 CE. Then, the extreme droughts stopped.
But with temperatures today both exceeding the warm climes of past droughts and now relentlessly rising, the return of the Southwestern megadroughts is almost assured. New research, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, illustrates how a timely confluence of warm temperatures and changes in the ocean stoked a cluster of 14 potent Medieval-era megadroughts.
Similar events could unfold again.
"This is what we would expect to happen in the future too," said Nathan Steiger, an associate research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and lead author of the study. Read more...
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