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The south-west region of North America already is one of those parts of the world that seems
to be becoming drier, more arid. This is part of a more general phenomenon whereby what
we think of as subtropical dry zones are spreading away from the equator towards the poles. We
see both in observations and in future climate projections that south-west North America
especially gets markedly drier, experiences repeated drought-like conditions. This will
clearly be problematic for the people living there, including food production in California.
At the same time you have factors like the warming of the region is leading to a melt
of the snowpack of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California and when that snowpack goes
that radically changes the supplies of fresh water for irrigation, agriculture and for
people living in that densely populated region. Also a more dry climate would be associated
with probably more frequent forest fires and there's threats from that. So we could be
looking at one region of the world, which is incredibly developed and people are incredibly
well-off, but actually might be vulnerable to quite a striking quality of change in the
nature of the climate, which will require considerable adaptation.