Long-Term Drought & Rising Temperatures A One-Two Punch For Parched Arizona - FT

[hatrack]

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Much of the US south-west has been in a drought since 1999, the most severe in more than a century, but it has been exacerbated by record warming. The average temperature in the south-west has already increased by about 1.5ºF above the average recorded between 1960-79, the US Global Change Research Program said in a recent paper. It is projected to rise as much as 10ºF by the end of the century, the programme says, as “human-induced climate change appears to be well under way in the south-west”.

Just as global warming is affecting life in developing countries such as Bangladesh and the Pacific island of Nauru, where rising sea levels are gobbling up land, so too is it affecting the richest country on earth.

Some studies estimate that the “dust bowl” drought conditions of the 1930s will become the norm in the south-west by 2050, and supplying the area with water will cost $950bn (€644bn, £600bn) a year, almost 1 per cent of US gross domestic product.

Certainly, 2009 has been difficult. The winter was drier than usual. Then the monsoons that usually drench the state each summer never arrived, leaving large areas to manage with less than half their average annual rainfall, says Gary Woodall, chief meteoro­logist in Phoenix. “Compounding that, we have had very warm temperatures, even by Arizona standards,” Mr Woodall says. “So we have had a one-two punch of very low precipitation and very warm weather.”

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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/43d67d98-b823-11de-8ca9-00144feab49a.html