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Drought conditions in the US Pacific Northwest are expected to get worse this year than in the past two years, which saw diminishing reservoirs, massive wildfires, and substantial cuts to agricultural irrigation.
Western North America, southwestern US, and northern Mexico started experiencing megadrought at beginning of the new millennium. This drought is the most severe in the continent since the Dark Ages, and no one knows when it will end.
Around 13 million people in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia are at risk of starvation as the Horn of Africa passes through its worst drought in decades, according to the World Food Program.
Recent discovery revealed that the intensity of heatwaves rises but their lethality decreases over a prolonged period of drought. The heatwave temperatures are rising even faster, as a result of the drought. Desiccated soils, on the other hand, reduce the severity of heat waves by lowering the humidity in the air.
In a year of intense heat and drought, California has had its driest water year in terms of precipitation in a century, and scientists are afraid the future 12 months will be even worse. According to the California Department of Water Resources, the previous water year was the second driest on record due to lower amounts of precipitation and runoff.