The short answer is aridification (or persistent drought with long-term climate shifts).
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Image credit: Circle of Blue
The long answer is Low-Pressure vs. High-Pressure Systems & The Heat Dome Effect:
Generally speaking, storms form in low-pressure systems where warm moist air rises and then condenses into clouds.
When this moisture becomes too heavy to remain in the atmosphere, it falls from the clouds as precipitation.
Conversely, in a high-pressure system, dense air is forced downward where it warms at the Earth's surface.
When a high-pressure system remains stagnant for an extended period of time, it creates what is known as a heat dome.
When a heat dome forms, high-pressure atmospheric conditions combine and act as a lid that traps any heat that would otherwise escape.
Shown above is an illustrated example of both low-pressure and high-pressure weather systems
Image Credit: Meteoblue
The Heat Dome Effect
Image Credit: Washington Post
The high atmospheric pressure then pushes the warm air toward the earth’s surface, ultimately amplifying the problem and creating a positive feedback loop (a process that exacerbates the effects of a small disturbance) of aridification.
This aridification feedback loop created by Paige Kempker depicts the multiple factors that are contributing to an overall decrease in precipitation and increase in temperature in the Southwest.
The changing global weather patterns resulting from anthropogenic climate change have created a stagnant high-pressure system over the American West.
The changing global weather patterns resulting from anthropogenic climate change have created a stagnant high-pressure system over the American West.
As visualized above, a heat dome has formed over an already warm and dry region, intensifying the persistent droughts that began in the 1990s.
Because of this heat dome effect caused by the stationary high-pressure system, scientists are now reclassifying this persistent drought as regional aridification.
Video source: Severe Weather
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