This must-have slide comes from a 2005 study, "Regional vegetation die-off in response to global-change-type drought." I first saw it in a powerful 2005 presentation [PDF] by climatologist Jonathan Overpeck, "Warm climate abrupt change-paleo-perspectives," that concluded "climate change seldom occurs gradually."
Overpeck noted that the 2005 study, together with the recent evidence that temperature [in red] and annual precipitation [in blue] are headed in opposite directions in the U.S. Southwest, raises the question of whether we are at the "dawn of the super-interglacial drought."
Before explaining why I like this slide and how it shows the future of extreme weather, I need to review the conclusion of the study, which was led by the University of Arizona, with Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. Geological Survey:
Global climate change is projected to yield increases in frequency and intensity of drought occurring under warming temperatures, referred to here as global-change-type drought ...
Our results are notable in documenting rapid, regional-scale mortality of a dominant tree species in response to subcontinental drought accompanied by anomalously high temperatures.
The researchers examined a huge three-million acre die-off of vegetation in 2002-2003 "in response to drought and associated bark beetle infestations" in the Four Corners area (Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah).
This drought was not quite as dry as the one in that region in the 1950s, but it was much warmer, hence it was a global-warming-type drought. The recent drought had "nearly complete tree mortality across many size and age classes" whereas "most of the patchy mortality in the 1950s was associated with trees [greater than] 100 years old."
The study concluded:
