Last year's snowpack — the snowpack of the future?
It's an El Niño winter, and the news is full of rain, sleet, and snow. If only California was as well.
Precipitation so far in this wet winter that is supposed to save us from the worst drought of our lifetimes
is only slightly above "normal" — and in some parts of California,
including the southern Sierra, precipitation is still below normal.
Think about that. The long-awaited wet weather event has, so far, just barely pushed things to around what's supposed to be "normal."
First, let's take a peek at conditions as of now.
That dark red splotch of the worst-possible drought conditions? That's most of us.
As for the dire prediction that very dry may be the new normal, that's from Berkeley professor B. Lynn Ingram, one of the two authors of a book,
The West Without Water, which predicts just such a dire, dry future.
Ingram thinks that rainfall for the 2015-2016 water year — the rainy period that normally runs from October to April — will be at 170 percent of normal. That's wet — very wet. But that won't make up for the four preceding exceptionally dry years, and it also won't help next year, when some scientists believe a dry La Niña will appear.
"We’re in a water deficit of at least two years in most of California," Ingram told Berkeley News's Anne Brice. "This means we would need more than a year of precipitation like this."
"It’s not likely we’ll come out of this drought. With climate change, California and the Southwest are predicted to get drier overall with warmer weather and, subsequently, more evaporation," she added. "Even with a wetter season this year, even next year, the climate is very likely to continue to be drier."
The idea that a dry future is connected to climate is gaining traction.. in some circles. This week, President Barack Obama
announced a temporary halt to new leases to coal miners wishing to dig on federal lands.
Climate change was, predictably and unfortunately, utterly absent from last night's Republican presidential debate.