The state of California is probably going through the worst drought it has had in at least 1,200 years, the US scientists said after analyzing tree rings. It’s now drier in California than during the 1930s dustbowl and the historic droughts of the 1970s and 1980s, a study published by the American Geophysical Union said.
The scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the University of Minnesota used tree rings to reconstruct the Golden State’s temperature and precipitation history back to 800 A.D., Washington Post reports. The method they applied was simple and vivid, with tighter rings on California’s oldest trees meaning dryer years. During the 1,200-year period, the researchers identified 66 droughts, which lasted between three to nine years. But none of them were as bad as the drought that started in California in 2012 and still far from coming to an end.