California

Journeyman

(15,031 posts) Tue Aug 17, 2021, 04:13 PM Aug 2021

'When will the megadrought end?' is the wrong question to ask . . .

'When will the megadrought end?' is the wrong question to ask
It's going to get drier, but we're not helpless.

When or how droughts might end in different Western places is a looming question. But in the continually heating West, it's not the most crucial question.

"The real challenge is when the recent drought does end, what are we going to do to prepare for the next one?" emphasized Benjamin Cook, a research scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who studies drought.

It's a salient question because large swathes of the West are getting drier. The trends in dropping reservoir levels and shrinking snowpack paint a clear, stark picture. "All of this points to us moving into a drier average future," said Cook.

Sure, it'll rain hard again. "You get one good year and things ostensibly look fine and people forget there was ever a drought," said Cook. But more troubling, even hotter droughts will come. What follows is insight into the current Western droughts, and how we might adapt.

https://mashable.com/article/drought-megadrought-what-to-do

I've been telling my clients for decades that California (indeed, the entire Southwest) entered a period of permanent drought in the early '70s: too many people trying to live on too little water. And though we've done a good deal to mitigate the ongoing drought, there is much more to be done. What that effort will entail, and where the savings will be realized, are open for debate. There can be no question, however, that what we do decide on must be long term, permanent changes, with a continued emphasis on conservation even in our flush years. Only such a sustained effort can prove of use.