NASA Says 'Mega Droughts' Could Last For Decades
SAN JOSE, Ca. (WJZ)--Mega droughts lasting decades. That's the future NASA scientists see coming, as climate change increases extreme weather events.
Alex DeMetrick reports, a lot of that science is coming from right here in Maryland.
In 2012, just a few months of drought impacted crops in Maryland.
"I've never seen corn go downhill so fast in all my life."
Think what a mega drought lasting decades would mean.
"These droughts represent events nobody in the history of the United States has had to deal with," said Ben Cook, NASA Climate Scientist.
Looking back a thousand years to dry periods captured in tree rings, and a super computer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, the forces that shaped weather in the past are used to model the future.
"And at the end of the day if we want to explore future climate, they're really the only tool we have to use," Cook said.
Impacting much of that future is the carbon based fuels present day life depends on. If nothing is done to reduce that carbon load into the atmosphere, NASA's climate models show mega droughts forming over much of the US by the end of this century.
Cook says, "with climate change, many of these types of droughts will last, 20, 30, sometimes even 40 years."
If immediate action is taken to reduce carbon build up droughts will still happen, but won't be as severe as the massive drying out of America currently being projected.
At current carbon levels, NASA's computer modeling also gives the odds of mega droughts happening at 80-percent.
