RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Under business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions, climate models predict California will get warmer during the rest of the century and most also predict the state will get drier.
But, new research, published July 6th in the journal Nature Communications, predicts that California will actually get wetter. The scientists from the University of California, Riverside predict the state will get an average of 12 percent more precipitation through the end of this century, compared to the last 20 years of last century.
The researchers found different rates of precipitation increase for northern, central and southern California. Northern California, which they define as starting just north of Santa Rosa (southern boundary), would increase 14.1 percent. Central California, which starts just south of San Luis Obispo (southern boundary), would go up 15.2 percent. Southern California would actually decrease 3.3 percent.
They also found the winter months of December, January and February, when California traditionally gets the bulk of its precipitation, would account for much of the overall increase in precipitation. During those three months, precipitation levels would increase 31.6 percent in northern California, 39.2 percent in central California and 10.6 percent in southern California.
All these percentages are in comparison to data from the Global Precipitation Climatology Project observed between 1979 and 1999.
“Most previous research emphasized uncertainty with regards to future precipitation levels in California, but the overall thought was California would become drier with continued climate change,” said Robert Allen, an associate professor at UC Riverside and one of the authors of the paper. “We found the opposite, which is quite surprising.”
The past uncertainty as to whether California would get more precipitation in the future was due to several factors, including year-to-year variations in individual weather events, shortcomings in models and because California lies within a transition zone, where northern parts of the state are expected to become wetter and southern portions are expected to be drier.
Allen, a faculty member in the Department of Earth Sciences, and Rainer Luptowitz, a graduate student working with Allen, analyzed 38 climate models developed around the world to reach their conclusions.
They found that warming in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean sea surface temperatures, an area about 2,500 miles east of the international date line, is the main reason for the predicted increase in precipitation levels.
The warming sea surface temperatures encourage a southeastward shift of the jet stream, which helps steer more rain-producing mid-latitude cyclones toward California.
“Essentially, this mechanism is similar to what we in California expect during an El Nino year,” Allen said. “Ultimately, what I am arguing is El Nino-like years are going to become more the norm in California.”
But, Allen cautions that prediction of an El Nino-like year is no guarantee of a more wet winter in California. The 2015-16 winter was an example of that. Many other climatic factors must be considered.
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Figure out how to forecast the next month accurately first then work your way out .
Models are … well models . When people can predict sun spot activity , volcano eruptions
changes in ocean current patterns maybe we will have a chance to improve the climate change batting average . Till then predictions are virtually meaningless mud thrown at a wall .
Thank goodness it’s currently in a long term warming cycle . “Settled science ” complete BS by climate capitalists and political globalists . Mr . Trump was right to drop the Paris charade.
When Mr . Trump has America firing on all cylinders other G20 countries are going to be wondering why they peed away billions and wasted their time in a foolish bid to set the worlds thermostat.
Mr Trump is the Road Runner and the other clowns are a gang of Yosemite Sam’s .
Good for a laugh, if these quotes weren’t so sad…
https://thinkprogress.org/leading-scientists-explain-how-climate-change-is-worsening-californias-epic-drought-476ceae51a6d
Thanks for that link, Michael.
You were right, it was good for a laugh. Here’s a humorous except:
“Why does it matter if climate change is playing a role in the Western drought? As one top researcher on the climate-drought link reconfirmed with me this week, “The U.S. may never again return to the relatively wet conditions experienced from 1977 to 1999.” If his and other projections are correct, then there may be no greater tasks facing humanity than 1) working to slash carbon pollution and avoid the worst climate impact scenarios and 2) figuring out how to feed nine billion people by mid-century in a Dust-Bowl-ifying world.”
end excerpt
I don’t know about you, but there’s not a dustbowl to be seen anywhere, as far as I can see. Today’s weather is some of the mildest of my lifetime, and I’m not hearing many weather horror stories from other parts of the world.
Go back to the 1930’s and check the newspaper headlines and you will find real climate disasters being reported from all over the world during those dustbowl years. Nothing like the mild, benign weather we have today.
The promoters of CAGW are living in a false reality of extreme weather where there is no extreme weather to be seen. And they get paid to do this. Unbelievable.
The weather is just right where I live. Should I expect it to get just righter?
I don’t know if it will get better, but it’s still raining in Oklahoma in July which is slightly unusual (and we love it), and the temperatures are not too hot, either.
A real hot summer in the U.S. is fast running out of time to get started. The date when the summer heat usually breaks is in the middle of August, so I would expect we won’t have a serious heatwave this summer, although that doesn’t mean it won’t get hot for a few weeks in different locations, but to build up a big heatwave takes a high pressure system sitting fairly stationary over a spot on Earth, and also depends on the moisture in the ground underneath the high.
The moisture prevents the heat from building up too high, although the additional humidity is as hard or harder on humans, than a higher heat at a lower humidity.
So a high pressure system will have to set up and start heating us up, and then it will take a few weeks to evaporate the moisture out of the ground, and then the high heat can really start to build up, but in this year’s case, the high heat isn’t going to have much time to build up before the season changes.
I have seen years where the high pressure set up early in the year like about March and then hung around clear through the fall, went away for a few months, and then was back in the early spring again the next year, and things really heated up during that next summer.
So a high pressure system hanging around for a few weeks is inconvenience, but is not the worst that Mother Nature can deal out to us in the summertime (the 2010 heatwave was extremely hot, but it’s been mild since then). Sometimes the high heat can go on for months. Or at least in the past this was the case. But that won’t be the case this year. 🙂
If that is what is projected then that is what will happen. Most of us in Southern California do not need to worry because most of our water comes from Northern California or out of state. Desalination plants is another option. In general we would be safest here in Southern California if we reduced our population.