On average, the ten driest states in the union are, in order of driest to wettest: Nevada (9.5 inches a year), Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, Colorado, North Dakota, Idaho, and South Dakota. During the summer crop growing months, the order is: California (.25 inch per month), Nevada, and Utah with Washington coming in 6th, and the rest listed falling about as for the year-long average. Evidence is accumulating that the American West is in for a prolonged and worsening drought—a megadrought–as some experts dub it. Easterners, mid-westerners, and the confederate states are likely unaware of the magnitude and the duration of the western drought or of the impact that the western drought will have on them. During the December, 2013, American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting In San Francisco, those experts reported following a drought present since 2000—13 years, and counting—and are on record that the likelihood is high that this century could see a multi-decade dry spell like nothing else seen over the past 1,000 years. The portion of the long-term drought that hit western North America from 2000 to 2004 was the most severe drought in 800 years. During these years, the region’s precipitation averaged as much as 22–25% below the 20th-century mean, with local deficits being greater. One paleoclimatologist states flatly that, “There’s no indication it’ll be getting any better in the near term.”
According to Bobby Magill, writing in Climate Central’s Science Journalists and Content Partners, “Since 2000, the West has seen landscape-level changes to its forests as giant wildfires have swept through the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada; bark beetles have altered the ecology of forests by killing countless trees; and western cities have begun to come to terms with water shortages made worse by these changes as future snowpack and rainfall becomes less and less certain in a changing climate.” Farming and recreational industries–which depend on snow and the life giving water it yields–are especially severely impacted now and it is not an exaggeration to extrapolate from history that such droughts have the potential to be threats to civilization in the future.
Megadroughts—defined as a drought that lasts in excess of twenty years—are not new, nor is the evidence conclusive that this one or any other in the past is related primarily to human causes. Natural variability has always had a tremendous impact on the climate system. Analysts recorded that California endured one of its longest droughts ever observed, from late 1986 through early 1991. Data from tree rings tell us that the West that was affected by a severe drought in the Medieval period was much worse and much longer than the current drought. Similar date reveal droughts that have lasted 28 and 29 years in separate occurrences, and two especially severe droughts lasted 100 and 200 years each in the Sierra Nevada range of what is now California. Some of those droughts have spanned the entire area occupied by what is now the United States.
What is the impact on the West already, and what need we fear for the future? The current drought is obviously related to sweeping and abrupt changes in the nation’s forests. Bark beetles are spreading more widely, living longer, and breeding more successfully during the prolonged hot dry periods and that is proving to be catastrophic to our coniferous forests. The ecosystems which support the magnificent population of mammals indigenous to the West are being eroded and destroyed. Such dry spells have severe implications for the nation’s water supply, and we are already seeing that in the decline in our agricultural water. The Colorado River no longer flows to the sea in Tijuana, Mexico, in most years; and legal battles rage among western states over the amount of that river’s water they can extract. The river’s flow at Lee’s Ferry in Utah has declined by 50%. Water levels in major reservoirs such as Lake Powell have steadily declined over the past decade; many water analysts project that the largest may never refill. River basins in several areas have dried up, resulting in an ever expanding area of desertification–leaving a wasteland. Water rationing in the arid counties of California has already been initiated and will likely go to the extreme of prohibition of agricultural watering all together in order to provide adequate culinary water. During this drought, scientists say, carbon sequestration in the arid regions was reduced by half. That results in a net increase in global carbon emissions. If that condition—the death rate of carbon sequestering plants–does not improve, the future will be even worse.
The financial impact is becoming severe as well. Many farmers and ranchers are simply giving up—reminiscent of the dust bowl conditions of the 1930s. Meeting domestic demands through transference from agriculture presents concerns for rural sustainability and food security. Economic losses exceeded $40 Billion in the droughts of 1980 and 1988, and the combination of drought and heat-related deaths totaled more than 5000 in each event. The drought of 2000 resulted in losses of $4 Billion and 140 deaths. According to the USDA, the 2012 drought destroyed or damaged portions of the major field crops in the Midwest, particularly field corn and soybeans. This led to increases in the farm prices of corn, soybeans, and other field crops and, in turn, led to price increases for other inputs in the food supply such as animal feed. As of April 2013, drought has persisted across approximately two-thirds of the United States and is threatening agricultural production and other sectors. “More than 1,180 counties so far have been designated as disaster areas for the 2013 crop season, including 286 counties contiguous to primary drought counties,” The Congressional Research Service reports. The total cost of the current drought thus far is estimated to be between $50 billion to $80 billion.
In 2013, California experienced its driest year on record, and the state’s current snowpack is just 17 percent of average. 2013 saw third-driest January and February in Sacramento in 150 years, and the driest in California since 1920, when statewide record-keeping began. As a result of the prolonged drought, Californians face dead brown lawns, bucket showers, rationing of toilet flushing, overuse and depletion of ground water, idle ski lifts, crop failures, death of stock animals, dry-wells going empty for years, a significant and possibly a mass out-migration, and more frequent and more severe forest fires. More than one-third of interviewed ranchers expect devastating impacts to their operations if drought conditions persist as they will in all likelihood. All California counties are currently designated agricultural disasters by the United States Department of Agriculture. The governor of California has declared a state of emergency covering the entire state.
Water demand in Texas is expected to rise 22 percent by 2060, according to the state’s Water Development Board, and the state is instituting stringent measures to insure that the increased population has enough to drink and enough to maintain conservative use in industry. They consider that this drought will cost the state $116 billion.
This persistent drought appears to be a fact of life for the United States, especially for the people who live in the West. What, if anything, can we do about it? The next blog post will discuss strategies, costs, and austerities.
