The Missouri River basin is drier than it was during the Dust Bowl, and a new study says it'll happen again

Two men ride bicycles on the riverbed of the Little Missouri River in North Dakota in June 2017.
(Associated Press photo by Carey J. Williams)

"For the first decade of the century, the Upper Missouri River basin was the driest it’s been in 1,200 years, even more parched than during the disastrous Dust Bowl of the 1930s," Darryl Fears reports for The Washington Post, citing a study. "The drop in water level at the mouth of the Missouri — the country’s longest river — was due to rising temperatures linked to climate change that reduced the amount of snowfall in the Rocky Mountains in Montana and North Dakota, scientists found."

Human-caused global warming is a big contributor to an emerging megadrought in North America, according to the study. Thus far, it has been mostly seen in the Western U.S., with California clocking a record-dry February and Western states fighting over who gets the water rights that once belonged to shuttered coal plants. Midwestern states, meanwhile, have seen record precipitation over the past few years.