Western drought fueled by climate change is the worst in 1,200 years, scientists say
The megadrought gripping the American West has generated the driest two decades in the region in at least 1,200 years, and human-caused climate change has fueled the problem, scientists said on Monday.
In their research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, scientists analyzed droughts in southwestern North America dating back to the year 800 and found that conditions during this century are more severe than the megadrought in the late 1500s.
Researchers also warned that the conditions will likely continue through 2022 and persist for years. A megadrought is defined as a prolonged and severe drought spanning two decades or longer, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“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,” said A. Park Williams, a climate scientist at UCLA.
“There is no evidence that the 2000s drought is starting to relent,” added Williams, who led the analysis using tree-ring data.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.