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Environmental Business Review | Tuesday, March 28, 2023
Climate experts focus on the impact of preparing for droughts brought on by climate change. This involves reducing water use and building infrastructure to manage water resources more effectively.
FREMONT, CA: The majority of the temperate zone is suffering from drought, with Europe experiencing an unusually warm, rainfall weather and large swaths of the American West still mired in an epic drought but not just those areas of the United States are suffering. Drought affects the majority of the Western United States, with areas of extreme drought concentrated in the Great Plains and Texas.
Even recent strong storms in California have not taken the state out of drought because of the huge rainfall gap. These storms, as well as the expected rain and snow in the following weeks, did not and will not relieve the drought, at least not yet.
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Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir in the United States, had just set a new low. Powell is created by a Colorado River dam on the Arizona-Utah border, and experts warn that if the reservoir drops much lower, water will not be able to pass through it. Millions of people who rely on the Colorado River would be cut off from their water supply.
To avoid an end-of-day scenario, the Department of the Interior will have to reduce water allotments for downstream users. According to scientists, climate change is exacerbating the underlying conditions of increasing demand for water and naturally occurring periodic droughts and warm temperatures causing more water to evaporate, making both droughts and heavy precipitation more extreme. According to the US Geological Survey, climate change makes droughts more frequent, longer, and more severe.
According to the atmospheric sciences, it's unfortunate that the largest natural occurrence of drought has coincided with this increasing warming caused by greenhouse gases that has brought everything to a head much sooner than anyone expected.
A group of international scientists who investigate the link between global warming and the increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events it causes, last summer's drought across the Northern Hemisphere was made twenty times more likely by climate change. The worst effects of the ongoing drought are being felt in the Horn of Africa, where millions of people in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia are facing food insecurity as a result of poor harvests. This spring, the region is expected to experience its sixth consecutive low rainy season. Meanwhile, it's summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and drought is reducing crop yields there as well.
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