by Becky Oskin, Senior Writer | February 12, 2015
Worst Megadroughts in 1,000 Years Threaten US
http://www.livescience.com/49794-meg...st-plains.html
Before this century ends, the Southwest and Central Plains states are likely to shrivel under a decades-long megadrought worse than those that ended the Ancestral Pueblo civilization in the last millennia, a new study finds.
Based on tree-ring records, scientists know that severe droughts coincided with the collapse of the Ancestral Pueblo culture. Great droughts struck in the 1100s and 1200s, at the same time as the abandonment of the stone villages at Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon and elsewhere on the Colorado Plateau.
Now, researchers have used the same tree-ring records to divine the future of drought in the United States. After analyzing climate models that include historical records and looking at drought trends revealed in tree rings over the last 1,000 years, scientists predict a strong possibility of megadroughts before 2100 in the Southwest and Central Plains. There is an 85 percent chance of a drought lasting 35 years or more between 2050 and 2100, said study co-author Toby Ault, a climate scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
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