The Red, White, and Green

Photo via Flickr: Mecookie

As Australia’s worst dust storm in 70 years cloaks Sydney and the east coast of the country in a thick red haze, fueled by the worst drought on record, you have to wonder if this is but a glimpse at our future. Scientists have already been predicting massive drought in the next 100 years as a consequence of global warming; and just today, a new study released by researchers in the US and South Korea reveals a new global warming-related El Niño weather pattern that could intensify droughts in Australia and India.

From Reuters:

While the conventional El Niño is a warm body of water stretching across the tropical Eastern Pacific, this new El Niño is a horseshoe-shaped region of warm ocean in the central Pacific flanked by unusually cooler waters, they wrote in a paper published in the latest issue of Nature.

“This new type of El Niño appeared in the recent decade and from our analysis, it may be due to global warming,” lead researcher Sang-Wook Yeh of the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute told Reuters by telephone.

For the full story, click here.

Do this now: With many areas of the US already facing some of the worst droughts on record, the most important thing you can do is  conserve water, arguably our most precious resource. Click here to calculate your water footprint.

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