Study predicts long drought in Southwest

Apr 06,2007 00:00 by UPI

NEW YORK - The southwestern United States could be entering a long period of drought because of global warming, a study released Thursday predicted.

Richard Seager of Columbia University, the lead author of the study published in Science, said the area from southern Colorado to southern California may have to deal with decades as dry as the drought that created the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the Los Angeles Times reported. That would present residents and officials in the area with some hard choices.

"There are going to be some tough decisions on how to allocate water," Seager said. "Is it going to be the cities, or is it going to be agriculture?"

Seager and his colleagues created 19 computer models of future climate in the area. Only one did not predict a long-term drought.

"There is a convergence of the models that is very strong and very worrisome," said Philip Mote of the University of Washington, who was not one of the researchers in the study.