The 1930’s “Dust Bowl” was a decade full of extreme blizzards, tornados, floods, droughts and dirt storms. While the rest of the country was hit by the economic collapse of the Great Depression, the Great Plains – labeled just a year before as the most prosperous region in the nation – was looking more like the Mojave desert than green, grassy fields.

Over plowing of the land, lack of rain and too much heat were long considered the causes of the most devastating climatic occurrence in United States history. By 1931, as crops died due to ten years of intense heat, dust from the over plowed land began to blow. According to the 1934 Yearbook of Agriculture, over 100 million acres of land lost all or most of its topsoil.

NASA scientists have now pinpointed weather factors that contributed to the Dust Bowl. According to Siegfried Schubert of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, scientists used a computer model simulator to look at climate changes over the past 100 years. The study found that cooler-than-normal, tropical Pacific Ocean surface temperatures combined with warmer tropical Atlantic Ocean temperatures and caused shifts in the large-scale weather patterns. These shifts caused low-level winds that reduced the normal supply of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and prevented rainfall throughout the Great Plains

"The 1930’s drought was the major climatic event in the nation's history," Schubert said. “What occurred (then) is really critical to understanding future droughts and the links to global climate changes we're experiencing today."

Researchers hope that they can track weather patterns in the future to prepare for globally affecting conditions such as El Nina, which was marked by cooler-than-normal, tropical Pacific Ocean surface water temperatures creating dry conditions over the Great Plains.

NASA’s analysis of other major 20th century droughts in the U.S. concluded that a cool tropical Pacific was a common factor. According to Schubert, using a computer model simulator to duplicate a major event like the Dust Bowl can help answer climate related questions. The study indicated that another major drought in the U.S. is not likely in the foreseeable future.