You don't have to wait to find out what the American Southwest will look like when it becomes a permanent dust bowl, with unrelenting drought conditions worse than the 1930 disaster you know from cheery books like The Worst Hard Time. Just watch this video of what it’s like to drive into a "haboob," a.k.a. a gigantic dust storm often seen in the deserts of the Middle East — hence its Arabic name.
Continuing the planet's recent theme of "extreme weather is the new normal, puny ape-people," this haboob is right in line with scientists' predictions for what will happen to Arizona and the rest of the Southwest — all the way up to Kansas — this century.
As Joe Romm of ClimateProgress notes:
In 2007, Science (subs. req’d) published research that “predicted a permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest” — levels of aridity comparable to the 1930s Dust Bowl would stretch from Kansas to California. Last year, a comprehensive literature review, “Drought under global warming: a review,” by NCAR found that we risk multiple, devastating global droughts worse than the Dust Bowl even on moderate emissions path. Another study found the U.S. southwest could see a 60-year drought this century.
