Dust and Seas
Science Magazine
Copyright (c) 2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of
Science
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How were such dry conditions of the "Dust Bowl" drought of the 1930s maintained for so long over such an extensive area? Schubert et al. (p. 1855) use an atmospheric-land general circulation model to show that the root cause was the combination of anomalous tropical sea surface temperatures (SSTs)--warm in the Atlantic and cold in the Pacific--that prevailed at the time. Proxy records, mostly from tree rings, show that similarly severe droughts have occurred once or twice a century during the last 400 years. Whether we can expect a similar episode soon is unclear, say the authors, because climate models still cannot make detailed enough SST predictions for more than 1 year or so in advance.
posted by Richard at
Thursday, March 25, 2004
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