Not every record is a good one, and the West Coast of the United States just earned a title that it would likely trade in if it could. While it’s been no secret that the region has been experiencing significant droughts for the last two decades, a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change found that the West has been dealing with the driest period recorded in more than a millennium.
Scientists already had a pretty good idea that things have been about as dry as can be out west for a while now. The region has been experiencing a “megadrought” that dates back to the start of the century. In 2020, researchers dubbed it the worst drought in 500 years, in a paper published in the journal Science.
