eKos: Return of the Dust Bowl

by FishOutofWater

Dust Storm, Texas Panhandle

Photo:Library of Congress Source: Red River Historian Desperation Road

In 2004 NASA's Siegfried Schubert discovered how ocean temperature anomalies caused the dust bowl drought in the Great Depression.

The study found cooler than normal tropical Pacific Ocean surface temperatures combined with warmer tropical Atlantic Ocean temperatures to create conditions in the atmosphere that turned America’s breadbasket into a dust bowl from 1931 to 1939. ...

These changes in sea surface temperatures created shifts in the large-scale weather patterns and low level winds that reduced the normal supply of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and inhibited rainfall throughout the Great Plains.

The sea surface temperature anomaly patterns that caused the dust bowl drought have returned.

continued at Daily Kos....

eKos: The Permanent Dust Bowl

by FishOutofWater

Texas, the southern plains and the southwest will become a permanent dust bowl, if greenhouse gas emissions, causing climate change continue, unabated. In Texas, average temperatures 5 degrees Fahrenheit hotter, combined with permanent drought, will cause rivers and aquifers to dry up and crops to wither and die. Evaporation will far exceed precipitation. Parched cities will be hard pressed to find adequate water supplies for household and business needs. Conventional power generation methods will not have adequate water supplies for producing electricity.

continued at Daily Kos...