California drought returning weather to normal

Bad news for California. University of California’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources states not only is the drought they are experiencing normal in the sense that it is not man made but the last 150 years have been abnormally wet (by California standards). The Golden State maybe returning to drier, hotter weather for hundreds of years in the future. Which means unless the state’s political climate changes, water rationing is here to stay.

“The past 150 years have been wetter than the past 2,000 years,” Ingram said. “And this is when our water development, population growth and agricultural industry were established.”

“Precipitation during the last three years in California has been low by standards set since records were kept, which began in the late 1800s. However, the current drought appears to be well within normal fluctuations in the state’s climate, according to research by Ingram and other paleoclimatologists. A trend of gradually increasing temperature since the 1960s has been causing earlier spring snowmelt, decreased snowpack, and is predicted to cause more extreme droughts and floods.”

In this seventeen minute video, Professor Lynn Ingram of the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at UC Berkeley discovered some of the first evidence of a medieval warm period in California by studying the water level of Mono Lake. The lake expands and contracts depending on the amount of runoff from the neighboring Sierra Nevada mountains. Stine’s research shows a dry spell that lasted 1,800 to 600 years ago. Her lecture is part of a series of presentations featuring UC and other experts speaking on topics aimed at assisting farmers and all Californians to better understand and adapt to drought conditions.