How will the West solve a water crisis if climate change continues to get worse?

A decades-long megadrought spurred by climate change is drying the West, but will it run out of water?

Imagine a world where water is scarce in the West -- or at least stretches of the increasingly hot and dry landscape. A decades-long megadrought spurred by climate change, which has led to alarmingly low reservoir levels in the region, nearing or at records in some cases, add urgency to considering this consideration. The West has more hydrologic variability -- more flood years and drought years per average year -- than any other part of the country, Jay Lund, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Davis, and the head of the school's Center for Watershed Sciences told ABC News. But a study published in Science Magazine in 2020 warned that the West is exiting an unusually wet time in its history and heading toward an unusually dry time that could last years -- even centuries.