This post initially appeared on Inside Climate News, a not-for-profit, non-partisan wire service that covers environment, energy, and the environment. Register for their newsletter here.

The dry spell in the Southwestern United States is most likely to last for the remainder of the 21st century and possibly beyond as worldwide warming shifts the circulation of heat in the Pacific Ocean, according to a research study released recently led by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin.

Utilizing sediment cores gathered in the Rocky Mountains, paleoclimatology records and environment designs, the scientists discovered warming driven by greenhouse gas emissions can change patterns of climatic and marine heat in the North Pacific Ocean in a manner resembling what’s referred to as the unfavorable stage of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), variations in sea surface area temperature levels that lead to reduced winter season rainfall in the American Southwest. In this case, the phenomenon can last far longer than the typical 30-year cycle of the PDO.

“If the sea surface area temperature level patterns in the North Pacific were simply the outcome of procedures associated with stochastic [random] irregularity in the previous years or 2, we would have simply been incredibly unfortunate, like an actually bad roll of the dice,” stated Victoria Todd, the lead author of the research study and a PhD trainee in geosciences at University of Texas at Austin. “But if, as we assume, this is a forced modification in the sea surface area temperature levels in the North Pacific, this will be sustained into the future, and we require to begin taking a look at this as a shift, rather of simply the outcome of misfortune.”

Presently, the Southwestern United States is experiencing a megadrought leading to the aridification of the landscape, a decades-long drying of the area induced by environment modification and the overconsumption of the area’s water. That’s caused significant rivers and their basins, such as the Colorado and Rio Grande rivers, seeing decreased circulations and a decrease of the water kept in underground aquifers, which is requiring states and neighborhoods to consider a greatly decreased supply of water. Farmers have actually cut down on the quantity of water they utilize. Cities are looking for brand-new water products. And states, people, and federal companies are taking part in tense settlements over how to handle decreasing resources like the Colorado River moving forward.