The researchers specifically considered hypothetical storms that are extreme but realistic, and which would probably strain California’s flood preparations. But geological evidence suggests the West has been struck by cataclysmic floods several times over the past millennium, and the new study provides the most advanced look yet at how this threat is evolving in the age of human-caused global warming. In the coming decades, if global average temperatures climb by another 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1 degree Celsius - and current trends suggest they might - then the likelihood of such storms will go up further, to nearly 1 in 30.Īt the same time, the risk of megastorms that are rarer but even stronger, with much fiercer downpours, will rise as well. (The hypothetical storm visualized here is based on computer modeling from this study.) The infrastructure design standards, hazard maps and disaster response plans that protected California from flooding in the past might soon be out of date.Īs humans burn fossil fuels and heat up the planet, we have already increased the chances each year that California will experience a monthlong, statewide megastorm of this severity to roughly 1 in 50, according to a new study published Friday. Because warmer air can hold more moisture, atmospheric rivers can carry bigger cargoes of precipitation. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.īut in a state where scarcity of water has long been the central fact of existence, global warming is not only worsening droughts and wildfires. This will cool its payload of vapor and kick off weeks and waves of rain and snow. When this torpedo of moisture reaches California, it will crash into the mountains and be forced upward. It will be carrying so much water that if you converted it all to liquid, its flow would be about 26 times what the Mississippi River discharges into the Gulf of Mexico at any given moment. This vapor plume will be enormous, hundreds of miles wide and more than 1,200 miles long, and seething with ferocious winds. No one knows exactly when, but from the vast expanse of tropical air around the Equator, atmospheric currents will pluck out a long tendril of water vapor and funnel it toward the West Coast. California, where earthquakes, droughts and wildfires have shaped life for generations, also faces the growing threat of another kind of calamity, one whose fury would be felt across the entire state.Īccording to new research, it will very likely take shape one winter in the Pacific, near Hawaii.
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