1000 Year Mega-Drought

One of our favorite places to vacation is Arizona.  We love the desert in February or March and it's awesome to lay by the pool for a few days and escape Minnesota's winter!

But what happens when millions of people MOVE there and all want their own swimming pools, toilets, golf courses and car washes?

Well, you end up creating a massive water project like Hoover Dam to capture the winter rains and spring snow melt.

Cool!  But what happens if it doesn't rain or snow for 5 years?  10 years? 50 years?

Long "megadrought" likely in western U.S., study says

As bad as recent droughts in California, the Southwest and the Midwest have been, scientists say far worse "megadroughts" are coming -- and they're bound to last for decades.

"Unprecedented drought conditions" -- the worst in more than 1,000 years -- are likely to come to the Southwest and Central Plains after 2050 and stick around because of global warming, according to a new study in the journal Science Advances on Thursday.

"Nearly every year is going to be dry toward the end of the 21st century compared to what we think of as normal conditions now," said study lead author Benjamin Cook, a NASA atmospheric scientist. "We're going to have to think about a much drier future in western North America."

There's more than an 80 percent chance that much of the central and western United States will have a 35-year-or-longer "megadrought" later this century, said study co-author Toby Ault of Cornell University, adding that "water in the Southwest is going to become more precious than it already is."

Megadroughts last for decades instead of just a few years. The 1930s Dust Bowl went on for more than 35 years, Ault said.

The study is based on current increasing rate of rising emissions of carbon dioxide and complex simulations run by 17 different computer models, which generally agreed on the outcome, Cook said.

The regions Cook looked at include California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, northern Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, most of Iowa, southern Minnesota, western Missouri, western Arkansas, and northwestern Louisiana.


Looking back in records trapped in tree ring and other data, there were megadroughts in the Southwest and Central Plains in the 1100s and 1200s that lasted several decades, but these will be worse, Cook said. Those were natural and not caused by climate change, unlike those forecast for the future, Cook said.

Here;  http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2025688459_apxsciworsedroughts.html

NOOOOO!!!!!!!!   These droughts will even be worse because of man-made climate change!!!

Call Al Gore!  The ice is melting!  The deserts are drying!  The oceans are rising!  The volcanoes are erupting!  The earthquakes are rattling!  The rivers are drying!  And MAN IS CAUSING IT ALL!!!!

Hey....here's another idea....shhhh!!!...I'll whisper it.....the earth is groaning and God is in control of it all.  It's longing for the Redeemer to return and set all things straight. 

Now seriously, to all my readers in Arizona who live in the SUPER DRY places....you MAY want to consider selling your place and just renting instead.  If the water bill begins to be $1500 per month and starts to cost more than most folks spend on their mortgage...you may not be able to give your house away.

As a nation we have moved millions and millions of people to the driest places in the nation. Why? Sing with me now!....SEEMS IT NEVER RAINS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.