Megadrought plaguing western US is the worst in 1,200 years

In US, the  western America is experiancing most severe drought. The intense dry spell that has parched the western U.S. the past 22 years is the region's worst "megadrought" since at least the year 800, a new study says. Megadroughts, which are defined as intense droughts that last for decades or longer, once plagued western North America. Now, thanks in part to global warming, an especially fierce one is back. The study, published  in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature Climate Change, said that more than 40% of the drought can be blamed on human-caused climate change. The current megadrought is more extreme because of the heat and low rainfall from summer 2020 through summer 2021, with conditions also exacerbated by human-caused climate change. “Without climate change, the past 22 years would have probably still been the driest period in 300 years,” University of California Los Angeles geographer Park Williams, the lead author, said in a statement. “But it wouldn’t be holding a candle to the megadroughts of the 1500s, 1200s or 1100s.” 

The research, which studied an area from southern Montana to northern Mexico between the Pacific Ocean and Rocky Mountains, found that warmer temperatures and increasing evaporation are drying out soil and vegetation. From 2000 to 2021, temperatures in the region were 0.91 degrees Celsius above the average levels from 1950 to 1999. Researchers used tree rings to track soil moisture over the centuries. The torrent of man-made chemical and plastic waste worldwide has massively exceeded limits safe for humanity or the planet, and production caps are urgently needed, scientists have concluded for the first time. There are an estimated 350,000 different manufactured chemicals on the market and large volumes of them end up in the environment.