70% to 99% Chance of Megadrought This Century

That’s a decades long drought that will impact the entire American Southwest.  Millions of people and a massive amount of the country’s fruit and vegetable production turned to dust.  We have the power to reduce the odds, but we have to act.

People living in the American Southwest have seen their share of drought. But the West's recent water woes may pale in comparison to what's coming later in the century, researchers say. The Southwest may very well face a decades-long megadrought before the 21st century is out.

… there are two takeaways from these frightening results. "The first is that we need to seriously revise our expectations surrounding water and water availability. A lot of our current infrastructure in heavily populated areas like Phoenix, Los Angeles, or San Diego are based around expectations of the past. And those expectations are a lot less relevant to our future.

"Secondly, it's not too late to get really serious about climate change, to curtail our production of greenhouse gasses and ameliorate [much of the risk of these megadroughts]," Ault says. "The train is leaving the station, but we still have a little time left to catch it."