Megadrought Ravages the American West, Climate Change Worsens the Situation

By contrast, the latest dry spell is already long and heavy. It is only second on their list to the famine of the 1500s, which happened in a world unaffected by human-caused climate change. That should give us pause, according to Cook, because it demonstrates that the West will naturally swing into such severe drought states without the added nudge of climate change. An extra push from humans could exacerbate the results.

And, according to their report, that is precisely what has happened: climate change has driven this "megadrought" into dangerous territory. It would have been poor regardless-their predictions say it would have been the eleventh most severe on record-but the extra heat from climate change accelerated the drying, bringing it to the second most severe drought in the last 1200 years.

Human-caused climate change, combined with human reshaping of natural hydrological systems-by damming waterways, planting large swaths of crops, and other methods-has changed the baseline conditions so drastically that there is no way to return to what was once considered normal. The physics is clearly incompatible.

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