Scientists Figured Out Just How Much of California’s Drought Can Be Blamed on Climate Change
Politicians & investors call it agriculture. Everyone else who eats calls it breakfast, lunch and dinner.
How much worse? Likely somewhere between 15 and 20 percent, said A. Park Williams, the study’s lead author and a bioclimatologist at Columbia University, in a statement, although it can be blamed for as much as 27 percent of the drought conditions experienced between 2012 and 2014. His team looked at data for precipitation, temperature, humidity, wind and other factors going back to 1901, and found that while rainfall patterns have remained random, temperatures have been steadily increasing with global warming. And that, they say, has been enough to have an impact on drought conditions.
“A lot of people think that the amount of rain that falls out the sky is the only thing that matters,” explained Williams. Indeed, a study released last December by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that the rainfall deficit was the result of a naturally occurring high pressure system, prompting headlines claiming that climate change was not responsible for the drought. However, Williams said, “warming changes the baseline amount of water that’s available to us, because it sends water back into the sky.”
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