CNN
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Parts of California is suffering from drought facing onslaught of powerful storms to start in new year, bringing flood rainfall and even mud and mudflows to the state.
latest in in series of storms are expected to hit the coast on Wednesday morning, and although the entire state will be affected by the end of Northern California and the Bay Area likely to see the worst on Thursday of in weather.
The so-called “bomb cyclone”. over The Pacific Ocean is named because of how rapidly increasing over short period of time – quit series of fronts on the west coast. These fronts are super-filled with tropical moisture from a powerful atmospheric river that stretches west to Hawaii.
While prolonged wet conditions will provide some relief in drought conditions, there has been too much rain. fast.
The storm could trigger more large-scale flooding, road washouts, hillside collapse, fallen trees, large power outages, “immediate outages of all, probable loss of human life.”
“It’s truly cruel system which we look at and need to be taken seriously.” – NWS Bay Area office added.
Storms are called “atmospheric rivers” because they are essentially a conveyor belt. belt of concentrated moisture in warm water atmosphere of Pacific Ocean. A similar storm unleashed the rains deadly floods, mudflows and hurricanesforce winds, especially in Northern California including the Bay Area, over weekend.
It’s all happening against background of Multi-year megadrought caused by climate change has depleted the state’s reservoirs and triggered water scarcity. These storms herald in much needed rain and snow to the state. But Daniel Swain, climate scientist in university of California in Los Angeles said it wasn’t enough to wipe out years of shortages caused by the relentless drought. built up.
“It will really help many with short-term drought in Northern California, maybe even erase short-term dry conditions, but it will take a long time more to completely abandon the longer term multi-year effects of drought,” Swain said, stressing that atmospheric event there will be a big storm.
This dramatic turn in periods of drought and heavy rainfall, or weather whip, maybe occur more often become more intensively in conditions of rapid climate warming. And scientists say the odds of these sudden transitions occur in California will get much higher if people keep pumping out planet-warming gases.
Climatologists say it’s a disadvantage of precipitation, higher temperature, as well as an increase in evaporative demand – also known as “thirst of atmosphere” – this pushed the drought of the West into historical territory.
how good run dry and drainage reservoirs, Julia Kalanski, climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego said these storms are badly needed. more than ever to mitigate drought despite the dangers they bring in some areas.
“It’s two sides of the same coin: they can be extremely useful because they bring so much of California water supply to the state or they can also be drought fighters,” Kalansky told CNN. “But when the duration gets too long, they get too strong, they come back-to-back and the landscape has no way to absorb all the rain it can lead to this flood.
This winter already shows some signs of respite for a state that is still almost completely in drought conditions. Large tanks in Northern California, including Lakes Shasta and Oroville, is slowly replenishing. However, smaller reservoirs like Folsom Dam increased of about 40 feet of water in three days.
Swain said the storms are pretty much improved dry conditions in Northern California in short term. But in long term, he said, climate change already made his sign and that it will take a long time more how one exceptionally wet year – to overcome this drought, successive wet years and cooler conditions will be required.
“In conditions of warming, the severity of droughts in places like The Southwest and California are moving on increased evaporation demand,” he said. “In essence, the atmosphere requires more water as the temperature rise so what do you really need more precipitation than you are used to to balance this out – and we don’t necessarily see more rainfall than before.
The average atmospheric river carries more than 20 times the water of the Mississippi River does, but like steam. California is prone to flooding from these storms as they rip off The Pacific Ocean and major floods have happened before, but climate change raises the stakes with millions of people most likely to get hurt.
Precipitation in parts of California topped 8 inches over weekend like last the storm swept across the state. Auckland had its rainiest day yet on record on December 31 when 4.75 inches of it started to rain and San Francisco celebrated its second- rainiest day with 5.46 inches – almost half of typical december rain.
A 2022 study authored by Swain. found that climate change already doubled the chances of there was a catastrophic megaflood in California in in next four decades – a storm like nothing else anyone alive today never experienced.
And while recent series of storms are notbig oneHowever, the study paints a picture of what the state could face as the planet heats up.
“We didn’t see mega floods, but we definitely saw hints of increasingly extreme precipitation even in middle of what was otherwise a period characterized by a fairly severe and persistent drought,” Swain said.
And yet, despite this humidity start to yearit worth noting that last year at this time it was relatively much wetter and the state was still in the swamp. in drought for remainder of 2022.
” face of droughts are changing,” Swain said. “Him easier and easier get into a drought – even after a very wet winter – because we just there is that growing evaporating demand and hotter summers.
“Multi-year droughts will look different than before,” he said.
