It’s hardly surprising that a study released the other day by a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research didn’t register on any political radar screens, amid Kentucky foot stomps, dead wrestlers, $2 billion in campaign spending and the pitched battles for control of Congress.

And, political year or not, there’s only so much news value in any projection of what might happen in climate science. Still, you don’t need a Ph.D. to ponder the potential ramifications of the study, by Aiguo Dai, who works with the center’s Climate and Global Dynamics Division.

It concluded that, over the next 30 years, warming temperatures associated with climate change were likely to create increasingly dry conditions in the United States and droughts around the globe on levels seldom seen before. Previous studies by Dr. Dai have indicated that climate change may already be producing drier conditions. A 2004 study found that the percentage of the world’s land area facing serious drought more than doubled from the 1970s to the early 2000s.

The recent study concluded that most of the western two-thirds of the United States will be significantly drier by the 2030s, and that large parts of the nation may face an increasing risk of extreme drought. This is not about melting ice caps; it’s about Dust Bowl-style drought within two decades.