Climate change has made Western air so hot that drought will threaten the region even in years of decent snow and rainfall, according to a new study by UCLA and NOAA scientists detailing the scary new normal of warmer global temperatures.
From 2020 to 2022, a searing drought in Colorado and Western states was caused more by hot air robbing water from the landscape through evaporation than by the lack of precipitation, the study concludes. As average summer temperatures climb higher, that means the West will suffer even when the water falling from the sky approaches historic averages.
“It is becoming the reality of the world that we’re living in,” said Joel Lisonbee, regional drought information coordinator with NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System and coauthor of the study published in “Science Advances.”
“Across the western United States, we are prone to drought. We’re also prone to high temperatures, and we depend a lot on the water that we have,” Lisonbee said. “We need to prepare for more frequent and more severe drought.”
Any patch of ground needs normal levels of moisture to promote healthy growth, and that moisture is present from two causes: precipitation, or lack of evaporation or “evaporative demand.” The scientists also refer to evaporative demand — what is taken from the ground and air by evaporation — as the “thirst of the atmosphere.”
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