US Desert Areas to Become Even Drier
Beneath the Amargosa desert of the southwest United States lies a hidden gem for climate research. The Devils Hole cave system, named after its bottomless depths, provides a window into the vast desert aquifer below. The cave system is home to a peculiar type of calcite deposit. As groundwater slowly passes through the cave, calcite precipitates layer by layer on the rock walls. “These thin layers have been accumulating on the walls for nearly one million years,” explains Kathleen Wendt from the Quaternary Research Group in the Department of Geology at the University of Innsbruck
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Rises and falls in the local water table provide important clues to how rainfall patterns in the southwest United States have changed. Most of the rainfall that recharges the desert aquifer comes from winter storms that move east along the Pacific storm track. The position and intensity of these winter storms depend on many factors, including surface ocean temperatures and the strength of pressure systems in the eastern Pacific.
The scientists from Innsbruck used a special drill to extract cores of calcite deposits above and below the groundwater table. Here, geologist Yuri Dublyansky extracts a core from underwater.
Credit: Robbie Shone
Lessons from the Amargosa desert’s distant past point to an even drier future. The already hot and dry southwest United States region is particularly sensitive to increasing global temperatures. “Climate models predict that this region will experience even higher temperatures and less precipitation in the next century,” says Kathleen Wendt. The predicted drying trend is largely due to a gradual northward shift of the Pacific storm track, which will further reduce the amount of rainfall reaching the southwest in the future.
Contacts and sources:
University of Innsbruck
Citation:Moisture availability in the SW United States over the last three glacial-interglacial cycles K. A. Wendt, Y. V. Dublyansky, G. E. Moseley, R. L. Edwards, H. Cheng, C. Spötl: Science Advances 4, eaau1375 (2018). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aau1375 .
Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/2018/10/us-desert-areas-to-become-even-drier.html
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