Daniel Swain Mentioned in The New York Times — Study: Warming Makes US West Megadrought Worst in Modern Age

Scientists used thousands of tree rings to compare a drought that started in 2000 and is still going — despite a wet 2019 — to four past megadroughts since the year 800. With soil moisture as the key measurement, they found only one other drought that was as big and was likely slightly bigger. What’s happening now is “a drought bigger than what modern society has seen,” said study lead author A. Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Columbia University.  Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist who wasn’t part of the study, called the research important because it provides evidence “that human-caused climate change transformed what might have otherwise been a moderate long-term drought into a severe event comparable to the ‘megadroughts’ of centuries past.”