NewsDrought worsens in some areas of the United States

Drought worsens in some areas of the United States

Before the start of summer, the western United States is suffering the effects of a chronic drought exacerbated by climate change, with historically low lakes, unusually early wildfires, water use restrictions and now a potentially record heat wave. .

88% of the west of the country was in a drought situation this week, including the states of California, Oregon, Utah and Nevada, according to official data.

In a particularly severe display of this trend, which is affecting more than 143 million Americans, Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, located on the Nevada-Arizona border, is now at its lowest level since its creation in the 1930s.

The lake, formed when the massive Hoover Dam was built on the other side of the Colorado River not far from Las Vegas, is only 36% full, below even a record set in 2016.

The authorities expected something like this, but until August, well into the summer.

For its part, the situation in northern California, which normally receives abundant rainfall in winter and spring, is no better. Lake Oroville, the second-largest reservoir in the state and a key part of a network that provides drinking water to 27 million Californians, is 50 meters away, a record lower than in 2019.

Widespread restrictions on water use appear inevitable in the coming months, with potentially dire consequences for western states, particularly irrigation-dependent farmers, who provide much of the country’s fruits and vegetables.

In California, whose vast almond groves supply 80% of the world’s production, some farmers have already started uprooting trees to save water.

As of April 1, the date that traditionally marks the last snowfall in the area, the snowpack on the upper slopes of the Sierra Nevada, the source of about one-third of all water used in California, was barely 60% of the average.

“Really, one unique thing this year is that when the snow melted, the runoff ended up soaking dry soils and evaporating” without ever reaching Lake Oroville, John Yarbrough, an official with the California Department of Water Resources, told AFP.

“So that’s the unusual this year, how little runoff we got from that layer of snow.”

“Weird, dangerous and deadly”

According to the US Drought Monitor, one-third of California is currently experiencing “exceptional drought,” at its worst.

And dry soils and water deprived vegetation create the conditions for even higher temperatures, fueling a devastating vicious cycle.

Not surprisingly, the southwest of the country is bracing for an extreme heat wave next week, with temperatures some 11 degrees Celsius higher than seasonal averages and with highs as high as nearly 49 degrees expected in some places.

Forecasters have issued heat warnings, saying Las Vegas, for example, could hit about 46 degrees Celsius, beating a record set in 1940.

Such conditions are “rare, dangerous and deadly,” said the National Weather Service office in Phoenix, Arizona, where the thermometer is expected to reach 47.7 degrees Friday.

Authorities are particularly concerned about the wildfires, which started unusually earlier this year and with unusual intensity. By the end of May, the fires in California had already destroyed five times more vegetation than last year in the same period.

Most experts say that while drought is an expected part of life in the Southwest, the situation has clearly been made worse by climate change.

A study published last year in the journal Science estimated that human-caused climate change worsened the impact of drought by 46% between 2000 and 2018.

“We are already living in a new climate, which is a different climate than there was when many of our systems were designed and built 50 or 100 years ago,” Noah Diffenbaugh, a climatologist at Stanford University, told AFP.

“And it is a climate in which these water deficits derive mainly from the influence of warming temperatures.”

The expert opined that the risks posed by climate change can still be controlled.

But to do so, he stressed, it is vital “not only to catch up with the climate change that has already occurred, but to take a leap forward.”

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