This is not good news.
A prolonged period of Dust Bowl-like conditions in the second half of this century could severely test strides made toward conserving scarce water supplies in the Western.
The current drought in California is just a taste of what the new study, released Thursday in the open-source, online journal Science Advances, says is likely to be in store. But strides made in the Southwest in recent years point to how regions can adapt – and hint at what might lie ahead.
The current drought "puts the Southwest in a very unique position to play a leadership role" in charting a path toward coping with megadroughts, said Toby Ault, a climate scientist at Cornell University and a member of the team conducting the study.
Even without global warming, the issue of dwindling water resources in parts of the West and central Plains have been coming to a head. Underground aquifers have are being drained at an unsustainable rate to support farms and, to a lesser extent, urban growth. During the course of the past century more water has been allocated to states drawing from the Colorado River than the river can deliver. And populations have risen. ...
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environmen...e-change-study-highlights-how-West-must-adapt
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