Friday, August 21, 2015

Warming climate is deepening California drought

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-08/teia-wci081815.php

Public Release: 20-Aug-2015
Warming climate is deepening California drought
Scientists say increasing heat drives moisture from ground
The Earth Institute at Columbia University

A new study says that global warming has measurably worsened the ongoing California drought. While scientists largely agree that natural weather variations have caused a lack of rain, an emerging consensus says that rising temperatures may be making things worse by driving moisture from plants and soil into the air. The new study is the first to estimate how much worse: as much as a quarter. The findings suggest that within a few decades, continually increasing temperatures and resulting moisture losses will push California into even more persistent aridity. The study appears this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

"A lot of people think that the amount of rain that falls out the sky is the only thing that matters," said lead author A. Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "But warming changes the baseline amount of water that's available to us, because it sends water back into the sky."

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