Droughts across the West are getting worse - and scientists warn it’s not going to get any better
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Persistent and incredibly destructive multi-year droughts will continue to advance as Earth’s climate warms, scientists say. Now, scientists are saying those dought conditions will continue to grow in the West and will likely get worse in the coming years thanks to climate change.
![[Much of Southern California is now in severe drought, according to Thursday data from the U.S. Drought Monitor. The region has gone months without rain]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/16/20/Screenshot-2025-01-16-at-3.08.43%E2%80%AFPM-%282%29.jpg)
The West has long been plagued by such conditions. Droughts dry up the state’s water bodies and reservoirs, crack the Earth, and impact crop nutrient intake. Droughts can have major consequences for all of Earth’s inhabitants, resulting in food insecurity, forcing migration, and increasing illness and disease. Drought has also been tied to war.
![[An aerial view shows Yagua Indigenous people carrying water and other goods due to the low level of the Amazon river at Isla de los Micos in Colombia last October. Researchers have said that climate extreme last year contributed to extensive drought in the region]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/16/20/GettyImages-2176775750.jpg)
Some 60 percent of all deaths caused by extreme weather events are caused by droughts, according to the United Nations. Recent drought and warm temperatures led to a spade of East Coast wildfires in December. Using global meteorological data from between 1980 and 2018, researchers in Austria and Switzerland generated the “first” global picture of megadroughts and their impact on vegetation at high resolution. While they found a “worrying” increase in multi-year droughts, they said that long-term effects of the megadroughts remain largely unknown.
![[A seasonal outlook shows drought continuing through the first months of the year in the southern and western U.S. Temperate grasslands, including in parts of the western U.S., are facing the worst effects from severe droughts]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/16/20/season_drought.jpg)
Various climate regions respond to drought episodes differently, with temperate grasslands the most affected in the past few decades. The researchers noted that changes in greenness cannot be easily monitored over dense tropical forests using satellite images, leading to underestimated effects of drought there. They developed an analysis to better reveal those changes and ranked the droughts they recorded by their severity since 1980.
