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Multiple bodies have been discovered this year at the increasingly receding Lake Mead in Nevada, with US detectives revealing a body on Wednesday in a barrel that may be tied to a possible decades-old mob murder found on the disappearing Las Vegas lake bed. 

Mafia-watchers are anticipating the body found was the work of gangsters, known to frequent the Lake in what is now becoming part of the gambling paradise's crime-ridden past.

According to local police, the victim discovered in May had been shot in the head and stuffed in a barrel before being thrown overboard, which was a stamp of the hitmen who shadowed Las Vegas in the 1970s and 1980s. A gun was also exposed near the body, discovered by a journalist, but it is still unclear if it is linked to the body as the weapon of murder or not. 

The Las Vegas police tweet read, "A firearm has been recovered in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area on August 17, 2022, in close proximity to where one of the human remains were found."

Just a few days after the body in the barrel emerged, another body was uncovered, and a third was discovered in July. An additional two more sets of skeletal remains were detected this month in the Swim Beach area of the lake. 

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Links to climate change  

The discovery of bodies has been rising since the beginning of May in the country's largest man-made reservoir whose water comes from the Hoover Dam in the Colorado River. Also known as the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, it hosts about eight million visitors annually and operates four marinas for fishing and water sports activities. 

Drought is gripping much of the western part of the US at a historic rate and is overexerting pressure on water sources, with reservoirs and lakes falling to record-low levels.

Lake Mead was once at a depth of 365 meters above sea level, but due to the drought that has been going on for two decades now, it is rapidly and alarmingly shrinking.

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On Thursday it was recorded to be at only 317 meters - close to its lowest level since the reservoir was filled in the 1930s.

Scientists say the anthropogenic climate change, instigated by the unchecked burning of hydrocarbons for energy, is accelerating the natural drought cycle at dangerous speeds. The droughts are one of the disastrous outcomes of the rise in global temperatures, now at a high of 1.5°C. 

According to a study in the journal Nature Climate Change, it is calculated that 42% of this megadrought can be attributed to the human-caused climate change crisis. 

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