The greatest social antagonism we as a living, loving, thinking species are currently facing–global climate change–is continuing to cause drastic alterations to our planet’s ecology. California’s already four-year-long drought is worsening by 27% as a result of higher temperatures, which are causing more moisture to evaporate from plants and soil, reports a recent study in the journal named Geophysical Research Letters.
California’s drought: THE BAD NEWS FIRST
Contained within the journal’s somber diagnoses is the prediction that the state of California will experience more “persistent aridity” throughout the next several decades, according to a press release of Columbia’s, disseminated August 20th.
“The reason why this is important is because the amount of moisture that the atmosphere is demanding due to human-caused global warming is rising,” remarked A. Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Columbia University, and lead author of the study. “And it’s rising steadily such that every year the atmosphere sets a record in how much water it is demanding regardless of what natural climate variability does.”
The new data estimates global climate change to have exacerbated the drought by a percent between 8 and 27, and Williams specified that the range is more likely to be between 15% and 20%.
WORSE NEWS LATER
Williams continued, saying that even though California will certainly have wet days again, these showers will only precede an even drier and more arid future. This means that the drought is going to worsen as time goes on, disturbing not just natural wildlife and plants, but the economy and the frequency of forest fires.
Additionally, another Californian climatologist also informed the state government through a press release that El Niño will not be enough to reverse the pace of this drought, whose momentum has given the golden state new record-breaking high temperatures and a record low snowpack. It’s become so dire that the state has imposed severe water-use restrictions on its citizens.
The study mentioned here considered multiple sets of monthly data that included precipitation, temperature humidity, wind and other latent factors between the years of 1901 and 2014. Despite a lack of rainfall trends, the scientists did confirm that average temperatures rose by roughly 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the duration, and this rise in temperature directly corresponds to society’s increased emissions of fossil fuels.
In addition, the release accompanying the study also explained that, in previous times, the gradual melting of winter snowpack high in the mountains actually helped water lowlands during the warm months. But with the persistence of increased heat, the snowpacks haven’t yet had a chance to recollect, reneging the old cycle of mountain-supplied rehydration for the life below.
AND TO ADD INSULT TO ECOLOGICAL INJURY
Worse still is the fact that, despite warmer temperatures and more sunlight increasing the evaporation of the pacific waters into rain clouds, “evaporation will overpower any increase in rain, and then some.” In roughly 45 years, “more or less permanent drought will set in, interrupted only by the rainiest years. More intense rainfall is expected to come in short bursts, then disappear,” lamented the release.
