News release: Predicting drought in the American West just got more difficult
People hoping to get a handle on future droughts in the American West are in for a disappointment, as new University of Southern California-led research shows El Niño cycles are an unreliable predictor. Instead, they found that Earth’s dynamic atmosphere is a wild card that plays a much bigger role than sea surface temperatures, yet defies predictability, in the wet and dry cycles that whipsaw the western states.