The heat contributes to a thirstier atmosphere, plants and soils, which increases demand and reduces runoff that flows into reservoirs. “One thing that is unfortunately becoming easier to anticipate are warmer than average conditions due to climate change,” Swain said. January through August ranked as California’s fifth warmest year to date, following 2021’s warmest summer on record. Warmer temperatures, too, are exacerbating California’s droughts. “If you look at the 21st century, we really only have a handful of wet years to work with.” He tallies far more dry years than wet since the turn of the millennium. “To get these kinds of years, we have to go back to the late 1920s and the 1930s, which were the Dust Bowl years,” said California state climatologist Michael Anderson. A more recent one lasted six years, from 1987 to 1992. “We’re basically having droughts that are disrupted by wet periods.”Ĭalifornia has seen lengthy droughts before, including two seven-year droughts that started in the late 1920s and 1940s. “Or did the last drought end? Which is the bigger question,” said John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced. Through August, no other three-year period in California history has been this dry - even during the last historic drought from 2012 through 2016. But if you were to see 50 winters like this one, most of them would be dry.” Even so, “I would still put my money on dry, even in the northern third of the state,” he said. Swain said California’s fate will depend on how exactly the storm track shifts, and that seasonal forecasts are inherently uncertain.
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