In the middle of the US. crops are stressed by the drought. rivers are running low, and cities and towns are anxiously hoping for relief.
Mike Shane’s Illinois farm got a nice soaking on May 8, shortly after he planted his 200-1crecorn crop, but very little rain has fallen since that time.
“It comes across the Mississippi River and then just disappears,” Shane, 47, said. “My corn looks terrible right now.” Without substantial rain soon, “I just don’t see any hope for it,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
Over the winter, the western part of the United States benefitted from the heavy rains and snow brought on by the many atmospheric rivers. But now, the middle of the country is going through an extraordinary dry spell.
Adam Hartman, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center, said some parts of the central U.S. have been experiencing extreme drought since the winter. In other states, “flash droughts” have popped up over the past two to three months.
The term, “flash drought” is relatively new, only coming into use in 2016. Flash drought refers to relatively short periods of warm surface temperature and extremely low and rapid decreasing soil moisture (SM). Based on the physical mechanisms associated with flash droughts, these events are classified into two categories: heat wave and precipitation P deficit flash droughts, according to researchers.
Basically, experts say the drought in the central U.S. is the worst since at least 2012, and in some areas, is drawing comparisons to the 1988 drought that devastated corn, wheat, and soybean crops, the Journal Gazette is reporting.
This year, although temperatures have been generally mild through the spring and early days of summer, rainfall has been sorely lacking.
The intensity of extreme drought and rainfall has “sharply” increased over the past 20 years, according to a study published on March 13, 2023, in the journal Nature Water. These aren’t merely tough weather events, they are leading to extremes such as crop failure, infrastructure damage, and even humanitarian crises, and conflict.
The big picture on water comes from data from a pair of satellites known as GRACE, or Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, that were used to measure changes in Earth’s water storage — the sum of all the water on and in the land, including groundwater, surface water, ice, and snow.
In the study, two NASA scientists examined 20 years of data from the NASA/German GRACE and GRACE-FO satellites to identify extreme wet and dry events. Floods and droughts account for more than 20 percent of the economic losses caused by extreme weather events in the U.S. each year. The economic impacts are similar around the world, though the human toll tends to be most devastating in poor neighborhoods and developing nations.
