The West’s recent heat-driven megadroughts are unprecedented in at least 500 years, new research shows.
“Hot drought” — when extreme drought and heat occur simultaneously — has increased in severity and frequency over the last century due to human-caused climate change, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.
“What we’re seeing is that megadrought conditions are being amplified by anthropogenically driven (human caused) temperature increases,” said Karen King, lead author of the study and assistant professor in physical geography at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
Wednesday’s [study](http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adj4289) builds on previous research, including one study that found the last two decades in the West have been the driest in 1,200 years, and the human-caused climate crisis made the yearslong dry spell 72% worse.
Both studies used tree ring data, which can serve as scientific time capsules as they are affected by sunlight, rainfall and temperature, allowing researchers to reconstruct the past.
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The West’s recent heat-driven megadroughts are unprecedented in at least 500 years, new research shows.
“Hot drought” — when extreme drought and heat occur simultaneously — has increased in severity and frequency over the last century due to human-caused climate change, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.
“What we’re seeing is that megadrought conditions are being amplified by anthropogenically driven (human caused) temperature increases,” said Karen King, lead author of the study and assistant professor in physical geography at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
Wednesday’s [study](http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adj4289) builds on previous research, including one study that found the last two decades in the West have been the driest in 1,200 years, and the human-caused climate crisis made the yearslong dry spell 72% worse.
Both studies used tree ring data, which can serve as scientific time capsules as they are affected by sunlight, rainfall and temperature, allowing researchers to reconstruct the past.
[https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/24/climate/hot-drought-west-climate/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/24/climate/hot-drought-west-climate/index.html)
That tracks.
It shows we’re more accelerated than the standard model, but it tracks.
Id lole to see some of the pessimistic models from the 70s and 80s to see if they foresaw this accelerated destruction