Gongloff: The next Dust Bowl is becoming more likely

About 90 years ago, American farmers in the Great Plains had so ravaged the thin soil there that a series of droughts turned the region into a vast expanse of dust, which formed monstrous storms and polluted the skies in cities hundreds of miles away. Around that same time, many places in the U.S. suffered from the most extreme heat waves in the country’s history, setting temperature records that stand today.

The two phenomena — the Dust Bowl and those epic heat waves — were connected. The former produced the latter...