Southwest drying predicted by UA stalagmite study

A 44,000-year climate history recorded in a stalagmite in a wet cave in the Santa Rita Mountains lends credence to what scientists have long suspected: When the climate warms globally, the Southwest dries out. In a paper to be published in February's Nature Geoscience, a team of University of Arizona researchers reports abrupt shifts between wet and dry periods that correspond to shifts in cold and warm periods recorded in Arctic ice samples. Julia Cole, UA professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences and a co-author of the report, said the record is pretty clear: "When Greenland is warm, we're dry; when it's cold, we're wet." Greenland is warming, and scientists predict it will warm more in the coming decades. "Abrupt" is a relative term in geology. The shifts from wet to dry took hundreds of years...read more