Drought

In 2013, California experienced the driest year on record.  Wildfires are now a danger even in winter.

Update (February 22):  More about the California drought.

Update (March 2):  Dealing with the drought.

Update (March 10):  The drought could get worse.

Update (March 30):  Kathleen Sharp reports on looming problems due to the drought.

Update (April 12):  Joe Romm reports on two studies that show climate change is drying out the US southwest and other regions.  He points out that because of the effect on agriculture, this will be the most consequential impact of climate change.

Update (April 20):  More bad news for the drought.

Update (April 21):  Lake Mead, which supplies water to Las Vegas, is drying up.

Update (April 28):  The news for California keeps getting worse.

Update (May 16):  Wildfires are already starting and a collection of drought related stories.

Update (June 10):  Drought and population growth are creating water problems in Texas.

Update (June 20):  And still worse in California.

Update (July 9):  Lake Mead in Nevada is approaching a record low depth.

Update (July 17):  California is pumping 62 percent more groundwater than usual.

Update (August 1):  Unbelievable.

Update (September 15):  And now fire.

Update (September 24):  Zero Percent Water

Update (October 1):  Now entering the fourth year of the drought.

Update (October 26):  The state of Sao Paulo is facing a water shortage.

Update (December 6):  A study concludes that the cumulative impact of California's drought is the worst in 1200 years.

Update (January 13, 2015):  Improved drought conditions in California, but a long way to go.

Update (February 14, 2015):  Computer models forecast megadroughts for much of the U.S.

Update (March 7, 2015):  California had the warmest February since records began in 1895.

Update (March 15, 2015):  Jay Famiglietti states that California has one year of water left and calls for rationing.

Update (April 11, 2015):  Lindsay Abrams interviews Karen Piper about dealing with a water crisis. One idea is to stop exporting virtual water.

Update (April 29, 2015):  A look at California's future.

Update (May 6, 2015):  If, in fact, extinction looms in our relatively near-term future, perhaps it will have been set off by the end of agriculture in California.

Update (June 28, 2015):  Looking at the larger water crisis.

Update (August 17, 2015):  Millions of trees are dying due to the drought.

Update (August 18, 2015):  William deBuys explains the mega-drought to come.

Update (August 22, 2015):  A study published in Geophysical Research Letters estimates that the California drought is 15 to 20 percent worse than it would have been due to climate change.

Update (September 15, 2015):  Fifty-two percent of the United States is abnormally dry or in some level of drought.

Update (August 2, 2016):  Adventures In Mapping illustrates five years of data.

Update (April 25, 2020):  Although the severe drought is past, a study published in Science finds that the years from 2011 to 2017 in California are part of a megadrought. From 2000 to 2018, the southwestern United States experienced the driest period in 400 years.

[R]esearchers from Columbia University, the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Idaho identified 40 prolonged drought incidents from the last 1,200 years. Only four are as severe as the megadrought we’re currently experiencing.