By Anthony Watts
The media this week are hyping a new study claiming global warming is causing a new megadrought in the American Southwest. In reality, the recent drought in the American Southwest is nothing new when you look at historical data.
The new study, published in Science, is titled “Anthropogenic megadrought.” The title alone suggests this is more of an opinion piece than a work of science.
In the abstract of the paper, author David Stahle claims evidence shows:
“…that the 16th-century megadrought was the worst multidecadal drought episode in the Southwest over the past 1200 years, and that the second-worst event occurred from 2000 to 2018 over southwestern North America (SWNA) and may be ongoing. The study also pinpoints substantial anthropogenic (human) contribution to the severity of the current drought.”
That sounds quite conclusive, and media stories from the Associated Press, USA Today, Washington Post, New York Times, and many others are uncritically distributing the claim made by the paper and its sole author.
Is the USA in a “megadrought”? Looking at April 14th 2020 data from the United States Drought Monitor, it sure doesn’t seem so. While there are indications of some drought in the USA Southwest, there seem to be equally large areas that have no drought conditions at all. And, just one year ago, there were no indications of drought in the southwest USA whatsoever. This might be why Stahle only used data through 2018, because the “no drought” year of 2019 didn’t support the claims of “megadrought”. Cherry picking anyone?
Looking at the USA drought monitor map for summer 1934 and summer 2019, the difference becomes clear.
Using a tree-ring-based drought record from the years 1000 to 2005 and modern records, scientists from NASA and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory found the 1934 drought was 30 percent more severe than the runner-up drought (in 1580) and extended across 71.6 percent of western North America.
Another study suggests that the 1934 dust-bowl drought didn’t even make the top 10 in terms of severity, and another found a “megadrought” in the Southwest USA during the time of the Roman Empire.
With that historical data, it is impossible to claim our use of fossil fuels in the last century is leading to a new megadrought.
Here’s the punch line; the notion that the Anthropogenic megadrought paper published by Stahle is flawed is perfectly illustrated by a single chart also using tree ring data from the Western USA.
The chart above uses data from the 2007 E.R.Cook et al. study showing severe droughts lasting as long as 200 years going back to 1200 years ago. Meanwhile, at the far right, the drought we’ve experienced in the 21st century is clearly evident and miniscule by comparison.
Clearly there have been long-lasting severe droughts in the Western USA long before “man-made climate change” became a social cause célèbre of the left. It is even clearer that the current claim of an impending megadrought is simply the questionable opinion of one scientist that has been serially and uncritically regurgitated by the mass media.
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The Four Corners area (where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona meet) has many buildings abandoned around year 1200. That is commonly referred to as an Anasazi culture. Its demise is usually ascribed to an extended period of drought.
1100-1500 were rough times in NA due to droughts.
http://www.kgs.ku.edu/Hydro/Publications/2012/OFR12_18/KGS_OF_2012-18.pdf – Page 17
We could be shifting back into those conditions slowly as the Little Ice Age gives way to the Modern Warm Period. This paper is a preemptive shift of the focus away from where it has been since 2015 – the global average temperature – back to regional climate patterns, i.e. NA drought, polar vortex, etc, because the IOD and ENSO appear to finally be setting up for La Nina in the second half of 2020.
Well, it’s different today.
Arizona has two major dam systems, the Salt River and the Verde River. According to today’s Salt River Water Report,
Salt River dams 98% full,
Verde River dams 100% full.
If anything, that a bit much rain.
I remember the 4 Corners Times from 1200.
“Megadrought blamed on stone tools!”
The story went on to say how life was better in 1,100 because life was simpler back then.
Derg is right, there was real social distancing back then – not like our new Torquemada-quarantine.
The abandonment of the Mesa Verde NP cliff dwellings have been conclusively and rather precisely dated using dendrochronology to a 2 -3 year abandonment period centered on a civilization/social organization collapse of 1275 AD. The occupants basically in that 3 year period just dropped what they had been doing for almost 400 years and walked away with whatever they could carry and widely dispersed to lower elevations in NM and AZ.
They fled after an infiltration of socialistic shamans.
Archaeologists claim there is evidence of social upheaval as the reason of the abandonment. Which begs the obvious question, “Why then after 400 years of steady growth?”
Starvation would that. No maize crops for several seasons from late spring cold cold and droughts to an early September cold before the maize had ripened provide the social stress needed to fractures hierarchical social contracts/arrangments. The social structure fractures. The young and healthy head out to greener pastures and never return. The older, more settled boomers collapse and are taken advantage of by charlatans offering security for what little meager rations remained. Everyone fled or died.
George,
The Anasazi left the high deserts of Central Az, around then, too, and moved to Phoenix which surprised me as it’s much hotter in Phx., at least, now. However, they built a canal system to catch water flowing from the No. and those canals, upgraded, of course, are still in use today. I presume the move enabled them to take advantage any waters coming down the mountains.
Phoenix today still depends on capturing as much water as they can wrangle out of parts north of them.
As they old saying in Az. goes, “Whiskey’s for drinking, water’s for fighting over.” Some things never change and that is one of them.
Yep we are really in a drought, the reservoirs on the salt river chain are full has not been that way in the 25 I have started coming down here where I have lived full time in the last 13 years. Drove to Roosevelt lake last Sunday to see what it looks like full. I am not certain but I think the same is true for the two reservoirs on the Verde.
Trees are not even round. Tree-ring width can be anything the researcher wants it to be. Not rain gauges, not thermometers, and the famous bristlecone strip-bark pines only grow for six weeks out of a year! Please no more tree rings…
But, but.. without tree rings, climate science has nothing!
Oh, wait..
They have lots of other proxies to abuse and turn upside down.
Don’t you mean..
But, but.. without tree rings, Michael Mann would be a nobody!
Oh, wait..
Yes, just measure the tree rings from the tree behind the larger tree shading it, and you would have a complete different data set. If that smaller tree were in an old hollow from a big ole rotted stump that collected and retained water more, or was on a higher mound of dirt that made it naturally less available for a water supply, it would be a complete different tree ring than the larger tree and rings being measured or even the two smaller trees being measured if one had a wet spot and the other a dry spot, all within a dozen feet of each other. As a forester, I see this all the time and we all use it to give the answer we usually want for any purpose.
Or just move over the hill or mountain a mile or two, and you might have a whole different general species growing, as in a Pine growing on a south aspect, and Spruce or Cedar growing on the north aspect, maybe only a few miles apart. Tree rings should only be used in a general sense, with many multiple random samples and additional data from other sources, such as general historical hydrology records for the entire general area. And all local conditions recorded and noted. Soil temperature being a big one as well. Then the puzzle starts to make a little more sense when everything is accounted for. It also helps to be truthful about what is being measured for any purpose. As you say, I can pretty much giver you any answer you might want, and we do so regularly. Michael Mann certainly did with great effect and most of the world bought into it for many years and still do.
What’s a forester know about trees, for pity’s sake?!?!?
I’ve been a forester for 47 years in Massachusetts- yet , the Greens here are very strong- they’re always trying to influence forestry policies in the state- they never ask foresters about the forests, they deny what we say- they’re now trying to shut down all forestry work on several hundred thousand acres of state owned forests- even though the state does very little forestry work- all, to save the climate! We know that if they win that battle – with a law they’re pushing- they’ll come after private sector forestry. As for tree rings- it’s absurd to think that tree rings are thermometers. With a very large sampling- it might give some clue- but it’s going to have huge error bars. I’ve seen stumps where the rings on one side are 10 times larger than on the other side. Many, many things effect the growth of rings. I have no clue about ice cores or corals offering as temperature proxies- but tree rings?- that’s nuts.
Might a “canker” or an “injury” to one side of the tree result in asymmetrical ring growth? (Just curious.) Or might some sort of root issue cause asymmetrical growth?
Recently visited my family in Phoenix. Timed the trip of spring training. Arrived Monday night March 9th and it rained Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. That Thursday game was called on account of the weather. They subsequently shut down Spring Training for the Corona. Before I left we got two more days of rain.
Now this was march, not their monsoon season and I am talking steady rain with intermittent downpour throughout the day with nighttime thunder and lightning on 2 of those days.
One thing i can assure the readers, between March 9th and March 19th Southern Arizona was not experiencing drought conditions and the news reported Snow in the north with hazardous driving conditions.
Anecdotal but true story. I lived in the mid-Atlantic and recall drought conditions there into the southeast 3 decades ago on different seasonal occurrences. All the while the evening news would ring their hands with end of days anxiety. Shit happens and man burning fossil fuel is an all too convenient scapegoat explanation with massive political overtones.
I grew up in Phx. Lived all around AZ actually. Rain in Spring is normal, it does rain in the Sonoran Desert, rain in the summer is also pretty normal. It just doesn’t rain like it does in other parts of the country as it is a desert.
Spring is gorgeous because the spring rains bring on the desert flowers and the entire landscape turns beautiful colors for a week. I hope you got to see a glimpse of the beauty of my home desert before you had to leave. It’s an annual event and the papers usually have a headline of Piccacho(sp?) Peak in bloom.
It never rains in Southern California, but man, it pours.
It never rains in southern California—but sometimes the dew washes away the bridges.
Thanks for that journey back to 1972, gotta love Albert Hammond
It never rains in Southern California
Seems I’ve often heard that kind of talk before.
Far be it from me to argue with you jenn. But, allow me to paraphrase just about everyone I encountered while in country “Holy [insert desired four letter word here]! It never rains like this in Arizona this time of year. This resembles our monsoon weather in late summer.” I heard this, from so many different Arizonans, over the course of the 10 days, so many times, I lost count.
Now it IS a desert. So nobody is claiming that there is not a drought condition in Phx, Just that it didn’t just happen in the last 100 years, as man industrialized with fossil fuels, so something else is afoot.
Rain is THE talk of the town normally, so if it was unusually heavy, then it was headline and comment worthy. LOL.
I remember the spring it snowed, in fact I remember every time it snowed when I lived there (that would be 2X). Everyone just stopped what they were doing and went outside–you could have landed a B52 on the capital building and it wouldn’t have been noticed but the snow….well that was IT.
Too bad you didn’t get to see the bloom before you left, it looks like the entire desert has been bathed in color.
Bill,
FYI,
Record rainfalls, but we’re in a Mega-Drought. Those Climate Dowsers got it so wrong.
It was reported on KNX this morning that Southern California is officially out of drought conditions as of yesterday, owing to rains in late March and early April. Note that KNX is our local CBS affiliate, a part of the MSM, so it must be true. It also must hurt to have to report it.
But, of course, just being out of drought last year, and now, are isolated data points of the much bigger mega-drought.
I wondered what those headlines were about. i hadn’t recalled reading about a drought in the Southwest in the last couple of years. I knew that there had been one in California, but hat it had ended.
Thanks for clearing that up Anthony.
Walter
I’m here in Melbourne, Australia
I use google on my phone to search and access WUWT and Judith Curry’s Climate ect.
But my phone keeps suggesting “articles for you” that are from BBC, NYTimes, the Guardian and renewable providers, even though I never access these site.
I got the US mega drought BBC article two days ago.
I have another one today ‘Theres no more water’ Climate change is drying island. NYTimes article about east Africa.
PS my phone never suggests sceptical articles
Good takedown Anthony. With rising CO2, the earth is greening to the tune of over 20% more “leafing out.” The first satellite data report from NASA (2014?) showed new forest cover had expanded in extent by 15% in 30 years -thats over half a trillion new trees- and it’s fattened existing tree stock. The most noticeable effect was greening inward from the fringes of arid areas because plants in high CO2 need less water. You don’t here a whisper about drought in the sahel in Africa or Lake Chad drying up, anymore. CO2 is busy drought proofing the US southwest and every dry area in the world.
It took the “consensus” by complete surprise. They made some awkward desperate attempt to ‘show’ that this was bad news for climate and then they basically went quiet. NASA, too had one update and, like their CO2 imagery, where most carbon dioxide emissions were from the Congo they went quiet.
IPCC science has found no evidence (low confidence) that extreme weather displays a connection to global warming or CO2 from whatever sources, let alone anthropo, although the frantic ‘scientific’ paper mill is rushing to produce ‘evidence’ that IPCC can use.
The great Irony is that the only palpable climate change in evidence is the greening of the planet, it’s human caused, it is spectacular and climate science doesn’twant to talk about it!
Actually, sceptics don’t seem to want to talk about it either. They’ve let the consensus control the topics, sceptics being largely reactive. Hammer this greening miracle! Use it in your speeches and videos. It is simple for ordinary folk and other science disciplines to see instantly that ‘carbon’ is hugely a net benefit – bumper crops and expanding habitat for our fellow creatures. Hey, its even an endothermic process – in this role, CO2 is a cooling agent. It’s “worse than they thought” in consensus parlance.
I’ve read that draughs are the effect of …cold not warm: warm=wet, therefore, a v.good for plants. The driest place on Earth is South Pole and Antarctica plus Atacama Dessert in South America (on the influence of the very cold current of Humboldt. We are in Adozen interglacial period for now 11700 years where one has cycles (warm-cold) every 1000 years and now we are in the warm cycle but exceptionally cooer than other ones.(one of the opinion on youtube: When the Sahara was Green). I think it has a sense either.
Kris, yes very cold is dry. In their own research showing a long southwestern N.American drought in the 16th century, they seem unaware that this was in the midst of the Little Ice Age! It seems investigative sceptics know the pitiful theory of the consensus better than they do.
When I saw this in the paper, I could tell it was one of those hype articles with little real information. Verrry interesting, but schtupid!
From this drought monitor map, it is easy to deduce that we are in a wetter than average time.
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
They categorize drought locally in term of percentiles for that location. Any place will be labeled “exceptional drought” 2% of the time and colored dark brown. The lesser conditions are the next 3, 5, 10 & 10%. The regions labeled SL are both short and long term drought but the color is the max of the two conditions.
30% of the US should have some color for short term drought and 30% should have some color for long term. Counting the SL regions double, the total colored area should be 60% of the map. We’re way short of that and the percentages for extreme and exceptional drought are even more below average.
“Any place will be labeled “exceptional drought” 2% of the time and colored dark brown.”
The 2019 graphic above shows Washington State west of the Cascades (where I live) as being in severe drought. I must have missed it. Seemed pretty normal to me.
Wait the first line: In the 16th century…
BAM! done
Isn’t the entire CAGW argument that we are destroying the Earth since 1950 due to fossil fuels? Last I checked, they didn’t have cars in the 16th century. So what bearing does that have on this supposed “megadrought”? NONE.
When are these people going to realize that the Earth is NOT Pleasantville?
Problem is, most kids these days have grown up in Pleasantville with our exceptionally stable Modern Warm Period supplying bountiful harvests, in addition to utilization of fossil fuels. They think this is the norm, (and are taught this) but not really understanding that the majority of the time, the weather (climate) is extremely harsh, such as the last 2.6 million years we revert to advancing glaciation and global droughts on vast scales for that majority of that time. This is the unfortunate part, that there are no guarantees with climate or weather but the kids are being taught there is.
Sorry, but there are no guarantees, and the weather/climate we have had there last 30-40 years is probably as benevolent as it gets. Our only real long term fear should be a significant cooling event, which is also a natural cycle it seems every 1000 years, as are warming periods. When we can explain and predict natural variation, then we might be able to attribute the small amount of climate sensitivity to GHG’s. In the mean time, I will take warming over cooling, just as an insurance policy against the true destruction and drought that cooling brings.
Drought, extreme weather and sea level rise are the big three “Climate Crises” scares regularly cycled through the unquestioning and apparently gullible news media.
It’s like it’s 1984. Abortion is life sustaining don’tcha know.
Ending is better than mending….
They aren’t gullible Steve. They are liars. Propogandists. Saw a survey of “journalism” students conducted by Columbia University. When asked why journalism was the field they selected the answer selected by over 80% of the students was “Because I want to make a difference”. IOW from the very beginning most of those at gravitate towards a career in “journalism” are activists.
And floods…if the drought don’t kill you the flood will…
This mega drought is so severe that it is even effecting the water levels of the Great Lakes (don’t you know?). These lakes are at record lows and any so-called flooding is just caused by irresponsible land use. This is true also of the Red River, where there is so little water now Winnipeg no longer needs its by-pass and can convert that into a skate park.
We all know that the dust-bowl was an invention of a shrewd novelist to bring around the arrival of the socialist paradise (and sell movie rights), just like the moon landings were filmed in Houston or when the media covered up that invasion from Mars that Orson Wells tried to warn the world about.
The time to act is now!
PROOF! Lake MI shorelines are eroding right now due to severely low lake levels….wait, that’s a headline…
GREAT LAKES EROSION CAUSED BY WATER SNAPPING BACK DUE TO LOW LEVELS:
The evil being in the Great Lakes is at it again, expanding the space between water molecules to erode our shorlines. We must act now! Only a great sacrifice will appease the evil one and bring our water levels back to where they are supposed to be! Quick! Act Now! Enlist in our cause as a paid sponsor. Read more here…..yadayadayadayadayadayada……
Expulsive, you should know being on the world’s most visited Climate Science site and most decorated Science site (see right side panel for awards) your political propaganda doesnt get the free ride you are used to on the echo chsmbers you usually visit. Here is an advisory on Great Lakes levels for March 2020!
Water Level Advisory
Water levels for Lake Superior, Lake Michigan-Huron, Lake St. Clair, Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and Montréal Harbour are above their all-time average for this time of year and are above the level of Chart Datum.
https://waterlevels.gc.ca/C&A/bulletin-eng.html
Expulsive you are welcome here, but you aren’t among fools. Have a real take next time for your own good and provide proof of claims. Many came here assuming the climate worriers were correct and were converted to the sceptical side by logic and science. Coming here at all marks you as at least interested in seeing what WUWT has. That separates you from the chaff. Disagree all you want, but bring your best game. “Climate talking points”, especially when demonstrably untrue won’t cut it here.
I think Expulsive was being sarcastic towards alarmists.
That’s came through pretty clear to me also.
Some of us have more finely-tuned sarcasm detectors than others.
– – winking smiley face – – Poe’s Law
Yeah Gary (I think you are a distant cousin based on your name) it was sarcasm, but maybe too subtle? (Though I don’t see how)
I pass by flooded areas a lot when driving through Gardenville on my way to Picton…while the Lake is not as high this year it has been very high the last 2.
Gary probably didn’t catch the “dontchaknow” in your statement. Just a guess.
Expulsive you got me! This néomarxiste putsch climateering has got me so jaded my usual prairie humor has been eaten up!
We might just be related indeed. I am actually from Winnipeg and in 1962, I was a hydrologist working on the preconstruction work on the brand new Greater Winnipeg Floodway as a graduate engineer in the class of 1961 U of M. I guess I’m a bit older than you, so may be some kind of uncle or great something or other. I am a great- great-great uncle to known relatives!
Cheers Gary.
Can you say “teleconnections”?
David, the middle part of your medieval warm period is actually the Dark Ages cooling period 600- 900. Viking settlement in Greenland came with the warming after 900.
Yeah… I threw that together in about 5 minutes in PowerPoint.
David, Climate Audit found the claims made in McKay and Kaufman 2014 were largely unfounded.
McKay & Kaufman’s claims don’t match their reconstruction very well.
And their recon is filled with ex-post selected proxies. The proxies they didn’t choose tells more about the paper than the ones they did.
Even with all that, the Little Ice Age is the only anomalous feature.
…if you cut off the last 20 years. If you include the last 20 years it becomes blindingly obvious the “only anomalous feature” is the stupendous reversal in the mid1800s and the subsequent abrupt, accelerating rise with no end in sight.
Can you say “right angle”?
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2020/04/twas-best-of-times-for-proxy.html
Hm, the year 600 AD would be a proof: draught is an effect of cooling and not vice versa (Antarctica, Atacama Dessert dessert in South America-Humboldt cold current. Now, we are in theory in a warm cycle(every 1000 years) in interglacial (Adozen, 6-12000 years period) but unusually colder one than previous cycles.
“draught is an effect of cooling and not vice versa”
Again that’s not universally true. There are deserts (and desserts, I presume) in all sorts of climates, warm and cold.
Oh now see that’s just masterclass stuff right there, Jeff.
Bravo son! Bravo!
http://www.reactiongifs.com/ba-dum-tsshh/
“One study suggests” One study finds” “One study concludes” One study using proxies which has not been tested by replication is pretty meaningless unless you are selling a narrative. Much of our media , scientific community, political elites, and others imagining themselves on the ramparts are behaving like well fed cowards. The system as far as they represent a system is failing in its basic purpose. If that happens over a long period of time fundamental change will come. Considering that we’ve had a more or less successful society allowing for steady progress in society and science for years it’s hard to imagine what that change will look like.
Tree rings again! It is silliness. Plus warmer means more rain, not less. If there were any historical megadroughts, they were short-lived and in cold periods, not warm.
The SW is already a desert. The average annual rainfall for Yuma is 3.3 inches. How can you drought that! Is a year with 2.9 inches a drought? Is one with 4 inches a pluvial?
If you need more rain, move to Oregon. Funny thing — many Oregonians move to Arizona when they retire. Perhaps rain is not all it’s cracked up to be.
We need to shutdown/lockdown the junk science centers before they infect everybody with poisonous nonsense.
“Tree rings again! It is silliness. Plus warmer means more rain, not less. If there were any historical megadroughts, they were short-lived and in cold periods, not warm.”
Depends on the region. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we get MUCH less rain in the summer months, when my lawn is brown. It’s nice and green the rest of the year.
That is weather
He is referring to the overall climate, warmer means more rain
Generally
Here on the canadian prairies we have certainly been in a wet period for many years
No, the climate in the PNW is less rain in warmer months, by far. The climate in the Canadian prairies can’t be compared to the PNW, they are different. There is no “overall climate”.
Well, East of the Cascades in Oregon is more like Nevada and Arizona in the SE corner and More like Wyoming in the NE Corner. Not all Doug Firs and Rain. However it’s still colder in the Winter.
Like Northern Arizona..
And Kate Brown is still your governor, unlike Arizona.
Thermodynamics, warmer doesn’t mean anything. Average air temp is actually controlled by gravity off insolation.
That’s Western Oregon. Go east of the Cascades and it’s high desert.
Proof that peer review in climate science is broken and meaningless….
Peer review is something that makes people feel better but which has no actual benefit. link
The above link refers to medical journals but, as far as I can tell, the problem exists in every science. We have a massive replication crisis and peer review doesn’t help in the slightest.
Anthropogenic global warming catastrophe is always somewhere out there, unverifiable by average people who notice nothing where they are. The arctic, for example. And now there’s megadrought! You can see why the unverifiability of it makes it expandable to your tastes, like ear candy to people who want the world to end, and dry kindling to the media. I mean, if we are already in a megadrought then what do you call a drought that actually affects people?
Boulder Colorado just surpassed a 111 year record of most snow in a winter, 150″.
That’s as meaningless as a record high temp in one place.
Is this meaningless?
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/reportapp/javareports?name=rescond.pdf
Don’t know, that’s not what was being discussed.
-75C on Vostok station in Antarctica on Feb.25,2020; Sout Lake in Saskatchewan, Feb.6.2019-112years cold record=-46C! More? Have you heard about a dynamic system and not a static flat EArth of IPCC@Dale Rainwater AlGore? Do you(dr AlGore) know a spherical geometry?Who has given you@Them) a diploma ?
[Stop changing your username and you’ll stop being moderated with every comment-mod]
If you’re responding to me, you’re WAY off base.
Individual records from different places and different years don’t mean much at all. You can find high temp records at different places during the same time frame. It’s just weather.
Sort of like this. McKibbon blathers about Miami, when over half the country is freezing.
https://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/1250953295289618440
” 2007 E.R.Cook et al. study”
Is that the same Ed Cook in the CRU emails that said we know “f**k all” about climate variability more than 100 years ago? Such an honest guy.
Much of the central US is semi-arid desert. The southwest is a mixture of arid and semi-arid desert.
What do these media mavens think arid and semi-arid actually mean?
An old deodorant?
I wouldn’t be a bit surprised!
“Luckily tree ring data is not that important.” – Steven Mosher
Bazinga!
I believe we are due a mega drought but the weather we’ve experienced over the last few decades is a far cry from a mega drought. I remember reading a couple of papers a good while back – back before every author included the obligatory “due to climate change” statement in every paper – and they suggested we are in the window for another mega drought. But by window they meant anytime over the next century.
My reply to a similar region, based on THIS “Study”
‘Megadrought’ emerging in the western US might be worse than any in 1,200 years
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/04/16/drought-worst-western-megadrought-here-study-says/5145929002/
My full reply using the NOAA Precipitation data for the same region covered in the “study” in three time periods:
2015-2020
2001-2020
1900-2020
The results was,
Increase precipitation/ decade
Increase Precipitation/ decade
Flat Precipitation/ decade
The study was all lies
My post with the Links to the NOAA data
https://www.usmessageboard.com/threads/megadrought-emerging-in-the-western-us-might-be-worse-than-any-in-1-200-years.818304/post-24482639
“…the 16th-century megadrought was the worst multidecadal drought episode in the Southwest over the past 1200 years, and that the second-worst event occurred from 2000 to 2018 over southwestern North America (SWNA) and may be ongoing…”
“Multidecadal” in my book is 2 decades or more. 2000-2018 is a few years short of 2 decades. I guess in the world of spin, 2000-2011 is “multidecadal” because it ventures into a second decade. Or even 2009-2011 since it spans parts of two decades.
If I understand it correctly if the forecast La Nina is as strong as is predicted by some we should see the SW US drying out again. We should also see an increased probability of hurricane strikes on US shores this coming season.
Just in the last week of February there were screaming headlines that San Francisco and Sacramento had not recorded a drop of rain in February for the first time ever recorded and that it signalled a bigger than ever drought. Of course Mother Nature read this and it hasn’t stopped raining since.