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Study: Warming Makes US West Megadrought Worst in Modern Age

Associated Press

   KENSINGTON, MARYLAND - A two-decade-long dry spell that has parched
   much of the western United States is turning into one of the deepest
   megadroughts in the region in more than 1,200 years, a new study found.

   And about half of this historic drought can be blamed on man-made
   global warming, according to a study in Thursday's journal Science.

   Scientists looked at a nine-state area from Oregon and Wyoming down
   through California and New Mexico, plus a sliver of southwestern
   Montana and parts of northern Mexico. They used thousands of tree rings
   to compare a drought that started in 2000 and is still going -- despite
   a wet 2019 -- to four past megadroughts since the year 800.

   With soil moisture as the key measurement, they found only one other
   drought that was as big and was likely slightly bigger. That one
   started in 1575, just 10 years after St. Augustine, the first European
   city in the United States, was founded, and that drought ended before
   the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620.

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