Scientists say that the rain will be scarce in the Southwest and existing water should be preserved.
(Mirror Daily, United States) – According to a study that was published this Thursday, the rain will be scarce in the Southwest region of America from now on, and long periods of drought will become common.
Researchers at the Atmospheric Research National Center analyzed data beginning from 1979 and up until 2014. After studying the meteorological phenomenon that took place between these years, they concluded that rain will be scarce in the Southwest.
It seems that the researchers discovered a few patterns belonging to broad storms. These storms were linked to the amounts of precipitations that fell each year in the Southwest region of America. According to their research, three of the broad storms that brought rain in the region have become more and more rare, leading to a drier climate.
A normal year, which means a year in which no extreme meteorological phenomenon occurs, is much drier in the Southwest than it used to be. The lead author of the study declared that droughts will increase in severity because the climate is drier and it doesn’t allow much rainfall.
But such a radical conclusion needs to be based on more than 35 years of meteorological data. Scientists gave the example of California. The sunny state experienced drought periods that were decades long.
According to the data, the state of California experienced almost two centuries of droughts in only 1,200 years. This means that the current situation may not be abnormal, but just a prolonged drought season which seems to be fairly common in this region of the country.
Another scientist claims that the last century and a half was normal from their point of view. He also added that there are examples of drier decades, even centuries in the past that were much worse than the period in which the Southwest is now, temperature wise.
It seems that the period between the middle of the ‘70s and the late ‘90s was actually an abnormally wet one and the population boom that took place in that time (the population of the state almost doubled in numbers) was actually based on a meteorological abnormality that created the water infrastructure that California has today.
Researchers have concluded that rain will be scarce in the Southwest, so they are hoping that their study will allow the official authorities to come up with water conservation and strategic dispersion plans.
Image source: www.geograph.org.uk