Article: NASA study finds 1934 had worst North American drought of last thousand years

Summary:

A new study using a reconstruction of North American drought history over the last 1,000 years found that the drought of 1934 was the driest and most widespread of the last millennium. Using a tree-ring-based drought record from the years 1000 to 2005 and modern records, scientists found the 1934 drought was 30 percent more severe than the runner-up drought (in 1580) and extended across 71.6 percent of western North America.

The Dust Bowl, in the middle of the Great Depression, was a large human and ecological disaster. Large amounts of farm soil blew off the farms of the Midwest so that dust was falling in New York City.

Two sets of conditions led to the severity and extent of the 1934 drought. First, a high-pressure system in winter sat over the west coast of the United States and turned away wet weather -- a pattern similar to that which occurred in the winter of 2013-14. Second, the spring of 1934 saw dust storms, caused by poor land management practices, suppress rainfall. 

"In combination then, these two different phenomena managed to bring almost the entire nation into a drought at that time," said co-author Richard Seager….

Farms in the Midwest now practice a variety of conservation methods to reduce the chance of this happening again.

This type of high-pressure system is part of normal variation in the atmosphere, and whether or not it will appear in a given year is difficult to predict in computer models of the climate. 

These droughts, the recent California drought and the 1934 Dust Bowl are normal parts of the climate and weather of North America.

This will need to be repeated because activists will try to claim every burp and hiccup in the weather as PROOF of anthropogenic climate change.