The future of the American southwest

Years ago, I was invited to give a talk at Arizona State University in Tempe. My host told me to fly in early in the day, so he could take me walking in the desert. I’d never seen anything like it: mostly cactus and rocks. Seemed like Middle Earth.

Since then, we’ve vacationed in Arizona and New Mexico several times, and I’ve always been impressed by the stark beauty of the desert southwest. But what is already dry looks to get even dryer.

“The southwestern United States has been in a historic megadrought for much of the past two decades, with its reservoirs including lakes Mead and Powell dipping to record lows and legal disputes erupting over rights to use water from the Colorado River.

“This drought has been linked to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a climate pattern that swings between wet and dry phases every few decades. Since a phase change in the early 2000s, the region has endured a dry spell of epic proportions.

“The PDO was thought to be a natural phenomenon, governed by unpredictable natural ocean and atmosphere fluctuations. But new research published in the journal Nature suggests that’s no longer the case.

“Working with hundreds of climate model simulations, our team of atmosphere, earth and ocean scientists found that the PDO is now being strongly influenced by human factors and has been since the 1950s. It should have oscillated to a wetter phase by now, but instead it has been stuck. Our results suggest that drought could become the new normal for the region unless human-driven warming is halted.”

Not only will the desert areas not see relief, but the desert will expand into Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, Nevada and California. Fights over residential vs commercial water rights, already heating up, will intensify. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration is killing renewables and pushing fossil fuels.

I greatly enjoyed my visits to the desert southwest, but I’m glad we retired to New England.

https://theconversation.com/climate-models-reveal-how-human-activity-may-be-locking-the-southwest-into-permanent-drought-262837?fbclid=IwY2xjawMPze9leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETF2QXVmYkd3b1U5eHRrc1N2AR5MX08_-3C6_CfThZdevwE6M3B9v_4DZ-DqBMNbY9eWiVe-jXXxvpBH7p9Txw_aem_Fkp2hkTEhEGFtC9nx0JH7Q

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