Abstract
Evidence based on sparse tree-ring data suggests a severe sustained
drought occurred in the 2nd century CE that could have rivaled medieval
period droughts in the Colorado River basin (Gangopadhyay et al. 2022).
Most of these tree-ring data have been used in gridded drought
reconstructions (Cook et al., 2010) which extend back to 1 CE over an
area that includes the intermountain western US. However, the 2nd
century drought has not been highlighted in prior studies given the
sparseness of the data available for this time period. A new
reconstruction of Colorado River flow based on these data documents a
notably severe and sustained drought over much of the 2nd century
(Gangopadhyay et al. 2022). While this reconstruction suggests that the
drought exceeds the severity and duration of any drought in the past
2000 years, a complete assessment of the 2nd century drought is
challenging due to the sparseness of data. In this poster presentation,
we describe the tree-ring data available, along with other proxy data
that provide evidence for the 2nd century drought and support its
severity. In our conclusions, we discuss outstanding questions and
thoughts for further work.