Afternoon Must-Read: AFP: ‘Mega-Drought’ Risk in 21st-Century Western U.S.
Increasingly, not just prairie agriculture but California agriculture looks like toast. Phoenix and Las Vegas look uninhabitable because of an unsolvable water problem. And when prairie agriculture goes and we shift away from carbon energy, there will be no reason to live between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountain Front Range…
…has been experiencing a drought for about 11 of the past 14 years…. ‘I was honestly surprised at just how dry the future is likely to be,’ said co-author Toby Ault…. ‘We are the first to do this kind of quantitative comparison between the projections and the distant past, and the story is a bit bleak,’ said Jason Smerdon…. ‘Even when selecting for the worst mega-drought-dominated period, the 21st century projections make the mega-droughts seem like quaint walks through the Garden of Eden.’… Researchers applied 17 different climate models to analyze the future impact of rising temperatures on regions from Mexico to the United States and Canada…. ‘The results… are extremely unfavorable for the continuation of agricultural and water resource management as they are currently practiced in the Great Plains and southwestern United States,’ said David Stahle… who was not involved in the study…