The 2015 California drought is as severe as it can get, and because scientists have been blaming human-induced global warming for severe changes in naturally occurring weather, a climate scientist at Columbia University named Park Williams led a study to help illustrate the link of global warming with the severity of the current California drought.
Williams also wants to illustrate how much we need to create robust solutions to the unescapable problem of climate change.
According to KRWG News 22, the study, which has been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, says that in over 113 years, the average temperatures in California has increased by 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
To come up with the results to the study, Williams and his team analyzed historical data climate from month-to-month between 1901 and 2014. The researchers reportedly searched for fluctuations in temperature, humidity, precipitation and wind.
According to the paper, the root cause of the 2015 California drought is a "persistent ridge of high atmosphere pressure" which has constantly blocked wet weather from getting to the state.
The researchers said that if human-induced greenhouse gas emissions had not trapped heat which led to climate change, the 2015 California drought could have been 27 percent less severe than its current state.
Conditions which create drought in California has been increased because of global warming. The researchers say that global warming "changes the baseline amount of water that's available to us, because it sends water back into the sky" via evaporation.
Natural climate variations generally cause wet or near-average conditions. During most years when this happens, the demands of the atmosphere are met with ease. However, the last few years have seen extremely low precipitation totals and extremely high temperatures.
Human-caused warming adds unattainable demands as additional atmospheric moisture at a time when water resources are already in low supply.
Unlike the atmosphere in usual climate variation, with global warming, atmosphere's demand for moisture increases as carbon dioxide levels are higher. California's water balance has become increasingly detectable in the past years.
While it is highly likely that wet conditions could return to California in the following years due to natural climate variability, the California drought will no doubt return continuously.
According to Newsweek, each time the California drought returns, high temperatures will demand more moisture, therefore increasing chances of severe droughts with increasing duration.
Researchers at NOAA, the National Weather Service's parent agency, announced that the average land and sea temperature last month had been 61.86 degrees Fahrenheit, reported The Hullabaloo.
If the present rate of warming and evaporation in California continues, in 50 years, the state will be seeing a semi-permanent state of drought, which will only be interrupted by intense rainfall.
Over the last four years, California policymakers have passed severe water restrictions to mitigate the California drought, however, scientists are concerned that if rainfall or snowfall returns to the state even for a short period, the public would perceive that everything is back to normal and a continued lifestyle of wasting water would resume.
"As time goes on, precipitation will be less able to make up for the intensified warmth. People will have to adapt to a new normal," according to a researcher.
