In the recent film Interstellar, a mysterious phenomenon known as "the blight" is wiping out agriculture around the world until only corn—for some reason—survives. Humanity is on the brink of starvation. While the blight may be science fiction, global warming is not, and a new study finds that future warming could decimate the U.S.'s Central Plains and Southwest regions over the next century, topping even the worst drought of the last thousand years. "I was honestly surprised at just how dry the future is likely to be," said co-author Toby Ault at Cornell University. The research, published in the first edition of Science Advances, found that future drought conditions are likely to exceed a megadrought that swept through the western U.S. in the 12th and 13th Centuries.
In the recent film Interstellar, a mysterious phenomenon known as "the blight" is wiping out agriculture around the world until only corn—for some reason—survives. Humanity is on the brink of starvation. While the blight may be science fiction, global warming is not, and a new study finds that future warming could decimate the U.S.'s Central Plains and Southwest regions over the next century, topping even the worst drought of the last thousand years.
"I was honestly surprised at just how dry the future is likely to be," said co-author Toby Ault at Cornell University.
The research, published in the first edition of Science Advances, found that future drought conditions are likely to exceed a megadrought that swept through the western U.S. in the 12th and 13th Centuries. This Medieval megadrought across the Southwest was so bad it has been blamed, at least in part, for the collapse of the Anasazi people, who disappeared from the region around that time. A megadrought is a drought that lasts longer than decade, which means the Dust Bowl of the 1930s doesn't even apply.
To predict future drought risk, the scientist first turned to tree ring data going back to 1,000 AD to document past conditions, including the megadrought of the 12th and 13 centuries. Then they ran 17 computer models of future climate predictions from 2050 to 2099, including both a business-as-usual—i.e. high—carbon emission scenario and a moderate one.
The researchers consistently found that future drought in the American Central Plains and Southwest "will likely exceed even the most severe megadrought periods of the Medieval era...representing an unprecedented fundamental climate shift with respect to the last millennium," they write. According to the paper, there is over an 80 percent chance of a megadrought lasting for decades in the region in the second half of this century.
Experts have long-warned that climate change from burning fossil fuels will likely exacerbate drought conditions in this region, but the new study is unparalleled both for the magnitude to the drought and the invariability of its findings.
"The surprising thing to us was really how consistent the response was over these regions, nearly regardless of what model we used or what soil moisture metric we looked at," said lead author Benjamin Cook with the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "It all showed this really, really significant drying."
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Dust storm image via Shutterstock.
