Definition
Dust Bowl. A period of drought, soil erosion, and intense dust storms that impacted the Great Plains of the United States during the 1930s.
Introduction
The Dust Bowl refers to the years of drought and dust storms that affected the Great Plains of the United States during the 1930s. The term “Dust Bowl” was proposed by a reporter writing an article 1 day after “Black Sunday” – April 14, 1935 – which was one of the worst days of dust storms. The term originally referred to some of the worst affected regions in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas. “Dust Bowl” is now used to refer more generally to the entire catastrophe in the 1930s comprising drought, crop failure, soil erosion, dust storms, economic collapse, and human migration.
Meteorological origins of the dust bowl
The Dust Bowl began with drought. Rain gauge data show that average precipitation over the Great Plains was less than normal for two thirds of the seasons between 1932 and 1939. Averaged over the core years...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Chepil, W. S., 1957. Dust bowl: causes and effects. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 12, 108.
Cook, B. I., Miller, R., and Seager, R., 2008. Dust and sea surface temperature forcing of the 1930s “dust bowl” drought. Geophysical Research Letters, 35, doi:10.1029/2008GL033486.
Cook, B. I., Miller, R., and Seager, R., 2009. Amplification of the North American dust bowl drought through human-induced land degradation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 4997.
Egan, T., 2005. The Worst Hard Time. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 352 pp.
Hansen, Z. K., and Libecap, G. D., 2004. Small farms, externalities, and the dust bowl of the 1930s. Journal of Political Economy, 112, 665.
Hoerling, M. P., Quan, X.-W., and Eisched, J., 2009. Distinct causes of two principal US droughts of the 20th century. Geophysical Research Letters, 36, L19708, doi:10.1029/2009GL039860.
Laurent, B., Marticorena, B., Bergametti, G., Leon, J. F., and Mahowald, N. M., 2008. Modeling mineral dust emissions from the Sahara desert using new surface properties and soil database. Journal of Geophysical Research, 113, doi:10.1029/2007JD009484.
Schubert, S. D., Suarez, M. J., Pegion, P. J., Koster, R. D., and Bacemeister, J., 2004a. On the causes of the 1930s dust bowl. Science, 303, 1855.
Schubert, S. D., Suarez, M. J., Pegion, P. J., Koster, R. D., and Bacemeister, J., 2004b. Causes of long term drought in the United States Great Plains. Journal of Climate, 17, 485.
Seager, R., Kushnir, Y., Herweijer, C., Naik, N., and Velez, J., 2005. Modeling of tropical forcing of persistent droughts and pluvials over western North America: 1856–2000. Journal of Climate, 18, 4068.
Seager, R., Kushnir, Y., Ting, M., Cane, M. A., Naik, N., and Velez, J., 2008. Would advance knowledge of 1930s SSTs have allowed prediction of the dust bowl drought? Journal of Climate, 21, 3261.
Worster, D., 1979. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this entry
Cite this entry
Seager, R., Cook, B.I. (2013). Dust Bowl. In: Bobrowsky, P.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Natural Hazards. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4399-4_99
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4399-4_99
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-8699-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-4399-4
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceReference Module Physical and Materials ScienceReference Module Earth and Environmental Sciences