NASA scientists have an explanation for one of the worst climatic events in the history of the United States, the "Dust Bowl" drought, which devastated the Great Plains and all but dried up an already depressed American economy in the 1930's
NASA scientists think they've figured out what caused the "Dust Bowl" drought, which devastated the Great Plains and all but dried up an already depressed American economy in the 1930's. In this historic photo from the time, a wall of dust approached Stratford, Texas.
Siegfried Schubert of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and colleagues used a computer model developed with modern-era satellite data to help them understand the climate over the past 100 years. The study found cooler than normal tropical Pacific Ocean surface temperatures combined with warmer tropical Atlantic Ocean temperatures to create conditions in the atmosphere that turned America's breadbasket into a dust bowl from 1931 to 1939.
The findings were published in a recent issue of Science magazine.
These changes in sea surface temperatures created shifts in the large-scale weather patterns and low level winds that reduced the normal supply of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and inhibited rainfall throughout the Great Plains.
"The 1930s drought was the major climatic event in the nation's history," Schubert said. "Just beginning to understand what occurred is really critical to understanding future droughts and the links to global climate change issues we're experiencing today."
More about the study is available from
NASA, here.
Credit: NOAA
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