extreme weather

Climate change will likely lead to drought in the Southwest that make the historic Dust Bowl of the 1930’s look like good times.  A bunch of scientific studies assessing the risk of drought were recently covered in various media outlets, including Forbes, National Geographic, Scientific American and elsewhere. Several of these media reports are based on an excellent paper, published in Science Advances, called “Unprecedented 21st century drought risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains.”  Their findings were not encouraging. In this paper, scientists from NASA, Columbia and Cornell Universities used historical tree ring data and something called the Palmer Drought Severity Index… Read More »Climate change, drought and the future of America