Increasing Greenhouse Gas Levels Could Cause The California Drought To Last For Centuries [View all]

[GliderGuider]

Increasing Greenhouse Gas Levels Could Cause The California Drought To Last For Centuries

Some apocalyptic news out of UCLA today: today’s increasing greenhouse gas levels could lock the Golden State into centuries of drought.

The study, published today in the journal Scientific Reports, looked at the history of California's dry periods over the past 10,000 years. The researchers, led by UCLA professor Glen MacDonald, tracked California's historic and prehistoric climate by examining a sediment core in the Sierra Nevada mountains. They found that there were a number of natural, climactic factors (sun spots, a slight change in the earth's orbit, decreased volcanic activity) that intermittently warmed the region through a process called radiative forcing.

“Radiative forcing in the past appears to have had catastrophic effects in extending droughts,” MacDonald, an international authority on drought and climate change, said in a news release. “When you have arid periods that persist for 60 years, as we did in the 12th century, or for millennia, as we did from 6,000 to 1,000 B.C., that’s not really a ‘drought.’ That aridity is the new normal.”

Essentially, the drought lasts as long as whatever is causing the radiative forcing is present. In the past, when that forcing was caused by natural phenomena, those factors always eventually diminished as nature took its course. Sure, their devastation could last hundreds of years at a time, but it was never permanent. What makes this time different is that greenhouse gases levels are only expected to increase. The last three years were the hottest and driest in California since 1895, and there is no end in sight.