Climate change to trigger longer, fiercer ‘megadroughts’: study

By Chris Arsenault ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Climate change will unleash megadroughts in the coming decades worse than anything seen in the last 2,000 years, new research warns. In semi-arid regions such as the U.S. southwest, there is an 80 percent chance of a drought lasting more than a decade, according to a study published in the Journal of Climate. The paper from academics at Cornell University, the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Arizona combines historical data on droughts with new climate models looking at changes to rainfall patterns caused by global warming. …