Luke Plunkett. Luke Plunkett is a Contributing Editor based in Canberra, Australia. He has written a book on cosplay, designed a game about airplanes, and also runs. Star Wars The Last Jedi also known as Star Wars Episode VIII The Last Jedi is an upcoming American epic space opera film written and directed by Rian Johnson. Watch Terms And Conditions May Apply Online Fandango' title='Watch Terms And Conditions May Apply Online Fandango' />Scientists Warn Climate Change Could Bring the Dust Bowl Back Out of the History Books. If theres anything that just about sums up the desperation of the Great Depression in one filthy package, its photos of the Dust Bowl, when over farming resulted in roving dust storms choking large swathes of the Great Plains region. Now, scientists are projecting that climate change could bring those hardscrabble days to a dystopian landscape near you. In a study published on July 1. Scientific Reports, researchers at Princeton University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory used satellite data from 2. Their research projects that climate change will increase dust activity in the southern Great Plains from spring to fall in the late half of the twenty first century largely due to reduced precipitation, enhanced land surface bareness, and increased surface wind speed. In other words, deforestation and the mega droughts which are increasingly becoming a feature of our changing climate are likely to create conditions ideal for the return of massive dust storms. On the flip side, the researchers projected a decrease in dust activity in the northern Great Plains during the spring due to increased precipitation and reduced bareness. Exposure to the dust itself is, obviously, very unpleasant but is also linked to a wide variety of respiratory and other ailments, including the possibility of potentially deadly pathogens and agricultural chemicals like fertilizer and pesticide hitchhiking on the storms. The original Dust Bowl accelerated the flight of hundreds of thousands of people from 1. Though the researchers noted the original Dust Bowl was caused in large part by rapid agricultural development of the Great Plains region combined with improper farming techniques like lack of irrigation or use of dust mulch, they wrote the influences of land use on future dust emission are minor compared to climate change. The new data is merely preliminary, according to Princeton researcher Bing Pu, but it lays the groundwork for the climate community to gauge the level of the threat. Watch Love, Rosie Online'>Watch Love, Rosie Online. Few existing climate models have captured the magnitude and variability of dust across North America, Pu said in a statement on Princetons website. This is an early attempt to project future changes in dust activity in parts of the United States caused by increasing greenhouse gases. Watch Zulu Dawn Online Freeform. Our specific projections may provide an early warning on erosion control, and help improve risk management and resource planning. Scientific Reports via Princeton.