OnEarth: “California’s current three-year drought seems terrible, but everything is relative. The moist, lush California we’re used to represents a moment in time—a golden age for the Golden State. A millennium ago, its droughts were longer, drier, and more damaging than anything the United States has seen in its short lifetime. And those massive droughts are about to come back. According to a study released yesterday in the journal Science Advances, the coming decades will bring droughts that are significantly worse than the so-called megadroughts of the Medieval Warm Period (900–1300 CE). You can call the coming disasters gigadroughts or teradroughts, in honor of Silicon Valley. Whatever you call them, though, California and the rest of the Southwest is about to get parched.”