Giving Compass' Take:

• Climate change is causing severe weather droughts to happen in the Southwest part of the United States. Experts say that using different terminology for what is happening might help change the way people use water and other resources. 

• How successful is the approach of changing the word 'drought' to 'aridification'? 

• Read about the farmers' fears of climate change in the Southwest. 

In early June, more than 1,000 people near Durango, Colorado, had to leave their homes as the 416 Fire swept across the landscape. Following a dismal snowpack, the region experienced a spring so hot and dry that the U.S. Drought Monitor labeled conditions “exceptional drought,” the worst category.

These circumstances offer something of a preview of the coming decades: While experts say the Southwest will continue to experience swings in precipitation from year to year, overall climate change is making the region and its river basins hotter and drier. That means humans must adapt to life with less water.

“We have to fundamentally change the mind-set of the public, and the way we manage this resource,” says Newsha Ajami, a hydrologist and the director of urban water policy at Stanford University’s Water in the West program. “And one of the ways you do it is, you have to change the terminologies that we use in dealing with water.”

This spring, the Colorado River Research Group, an independent team of scientists focused on the river, labeled the climate transition in the Colorado River Basin “aridification,” meaning a transformation to a drier environment. The call for a move away from the word “drought” highlighted the importance of the specific language used to describe what’s going on in the Southwest: It could shift cultural norms around water use and help people internalize the need to rip out lawns, stop washing cars and refrain from building new diversions on already strapped rivers.

Reframing our understanding of the Southwest’s climate – thinking of it as a place experiencing aridification, a dry place getting drier, rather than a place simply waiting for the next drought to end – will have major ramifications only if it changes how people actually use water.

Read the full article about changing the word drought by Emily Benson at News Deeply