Hundred-Year Forecast: Drought
By CHRISTOPHER R. SCHWALM, CHRISTOPHER A. WILLIAMS and KEVIN SCHAEFER
Published: August 11, 2012
BY many measurements, this summer’s drought is one for the record books. But so was last year’s drought in the South Central states. And it has been only a decade since an extreme five-year drought hit the American West. Widespread annual droughts, once a rare calamity, have become more frequent and are set to become the “new normal.
Extreme Weather and Drought Are Here to Stay – NYTimes.com
Complete bullshit. Hansen said the exact opposite in 1999
Empirical evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought. The drought of 1999 covered a smaller area than the 1988 drought, when the Mississippi almost dried up. And 1988 was a temporary inconvenience as compared with repeated droughts during the 1930s “Dust Bowl” that caused an exodus from the prairies, as chronicled in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.
Multi-year droughts used to be much more frequent and much more severe.
Contiguous U.S., Palmer Modified Drought Index (PMDI), 36-Month Period Ending in December, 1897-2012
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