JACKSON MOUNTAIN – Two straight lines of 6-foot-tall red and white measuring sticks divide a small clearing near the Jackson Mountain trail head into quarters. A young buck wanders through the meadow .
The drought continues, and research shows the time between storms is growing abc15.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from abc15.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Study shows storms are becoming more unpredictable in recent decades
Research finds storms are becoming more unpredictable
In addition, the research finds that droughts are now longer in duration. FOX 10 s Stephanie Olmo reports.
PHOENIX - In a recent study, researchers found that droughts are lasting longer and storms are more unpredictable in the last five decades.
Researchers went through 50 years of weather data, and they discovered that the bigger changes took place in the desert Southwest. What we were really trying to accomplish was looking at the day-to-day variations in rainfall across the Western United States. We were trying to take a hard look at the timing of that rainfall, how often the ground gets wet, said Dr. Joel Biederman, a research hydrologist with the United States Department of Agriculture s Southwest Watershed Research Center in Tucson.
Periods of drought in the western United States have become longer over the past 50 years, according to a new study.
In hopes of understanding how significantly rainfall totals and timing have changed in the past five decades, researchers analyzed daily meteorological data from over 300 long-term weather stations across the western US.
“In the West, total annual rainfall has decreased by about 0.4 inches since the 1970s. The average longest dry period has increased by roughly 50% from 20 to 32 days,” says co-senior author William K. Smith, assistant professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona.
The new study reports ominous trends for the desert southwest, including southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico, regions that already experience relatively high mean temperatures and lower annual water inputs, such as rainfall or snowfall. For these regions, substantial multi-decade evidence demonstrates droughts are becoming longer