Dust Bowl 2.0: Is the Southwest Drying Up?

[Herman Munster]

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=C38411DA-E7F2-99DF-3FDC4522CD485048&chanID=sa003

A research team, led by a group at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) in Palisades, N.Y., reveal in this week's Science that southwestern North America will likely be saddled with increasingly arid conditions during the next century. This drying effect, the researchers say, is directly related to man-made climate change and will demand new methods for managing water resources in the region. They based their findings on 19 climate models, all of which contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report released in Paris in early February

"The Southwest," in the current study, refers to the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico. The researchers add that a similar pattern of drying is predicted for the region bounded by southern Europe, the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East; wetter climes are expected for areas farther away from the tropics and closer to Earth's poles.
The output of the climate models used in the current analysis came in measures of future precipitation and evaporation. " what matters in terms of the water that's available to the soil in the ground," says study co-author Mingfang Ting, a senior research scientist at LDEO. By subtracting the area's evaporation rate from its precipitation rate, the scientists were able to make projections on the net gain of water available in the ground. (Of the 19 models, 18 of them show this value to be negative by the latter half of the current century, indicating, according to Ting, that "precipitation is reduced or evaporation could be increased.")

On average, the models suggest that the cusp of the late 20th century–early 21st century ushered in a period of consistently arid climate. Soon, if not already, one quarter of the models predict that moisture will begin to disappear from the region at a rate of 0.1 millimeters per day. In fact, the researchers believe the current six-to-seven-year drought in the region is the beginning of this drying trend. "The current drought is related to the warming due to the greenhouse gases," says Ting. "In the past, El niño disappate the drought, but now it's not able to stop the drought.''

[Erika]

1. This area is predicted to be the next dust bowl.

Water allocation is already at 100% of available water.

[wackadoo wabbit]

2. And yet Phoenix is still as covered with grassy lawns as any area of Seattle

When will people in Arizona wake up and realize that we're living in a damn desert?

[misanthrope]

3. Read "Cadillac Desert"**nm

**