Science Source
Intensified dust storm activity and Valley fever infection in the southwestern United States
- States that computer models predict that as the Earth warms, the Southwest United States will become drier
- States that in the already arid Southwest, this means more dust storms and even potential environmental catastrophes such as desertification and another “Dust Bowl”
- Examines a newly reconstructed data record
- Finds that there was a 240% increase in the number of large dust storms between 1990s and 2000s
- Finds that this trend is likely driven by large-scale variations of sea surface temperature in the Pacific Ocean, with the strongest correlation with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
- States that in the Southwest, the infection rate of Valley fever has mysteriously gone up more than 800% from 2000 to 2011
- In two endemic centers, dust storms are found to better correlated with the disease than any other known controlling factor
- Implies a potential teleconnection between large-scale climate variations and infectious disease in sensitive regions
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