The #ColoradoRiver is shrinking due to #ClimateChange, which means the nation's 2 largest #reservoirs, #LakeMead & #LakePowell, created by #dams, have reached record low levels in recent years amid a #megadrought spanning >2 decades. If #water levels fall much lower, they could lose the ability to generate #hydropower within the massive dams that hold them back, or even lose the ability to pass water downstream.
Severe droughts are getting bigger, hotter, drier and longer
Droughts lasting multiple years are becoming more common and extreme around the globe, expanding by about 50,000 square kilometres annually.
The American West May Be Entering a ‘#Megadrought’ Worse Than Any in Historical Record - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/american-west-may-be-entering-megadrought-worse-any-historical-record-180974688/ @smithsonianmag
my features published in #CurrentBiology this year, issue 3: #groundwater supplies are shrinking around the world due to unsustainable use and #megadrought linked to #ClimateCatastrophe https://proseandpassion.blogspot.com/2024/02/running-out-of-groundwater.html
(4/n)
...It has happened time and again before on a much smaller scale. Most noticeably so in the 12th century BCE in the mediterranean when a 150 year #Megadrought caused the invasion of the #SeaPeople, e.g. in #AncientEgypt, causing the #BronzeAgeCollapse*.
Only that the global population was a little over 100 mn people and not 8,100 mn people.**
It is really simple we need to stop burning fossil fules to reduce...
