Tree rings show Colorado River Basin drought could get much worse
What two stooped and warped sentinels in the Great Basin are telling us is a scary story, with a twist of possible redemption. Approximately 1,800 years after popping out of the ground as seedlings, live bristlecone pines are still talking to us nearly 2 millennia later. … Rings from trees that were alive in the west’s Great Basin in the second century A.D. show a devastating 24-year drought back then that makes our current 22-year Western drought look positively moist, the research shows. The tree rings and other evidence from caves and bogs show the drought cut 32% from the average flow of the Colorado River at Lees Ferry, in northern Arizona near the beginning of the Grand Canyon.