The climate crisis is not only bringing hotter summers, but it’s also making our mild California winters more dangerous.
This year’s snow and rain is great for our water supply, but too much of it poses dangerous flood risks. As global carbon pollution changes the climate and causes more intense storms and severe swings in weather, this is a big challenge for adaptation and keeping communities safe.
A Changing Water Cycle
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Maybe you remember the concept of the water cycle from elementary school: when water from lakes, rivers and the ocean evaporates, it condenses to form clouds, then falls back to the earth in the form of rain or snow.
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But as our climate heats up, water on the landscape, such as mountain snow and rainfed streams and lakes, evaporates more quickly and dries out soils faster. That leaves less water for humans and the animals and plants that rely on that surface water, and also leads to a “thirstier” atmosphere, which then dumps that evaporated water in the form of increasingly intense storms and atmospheric rivers.
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That’s why the climate crisis is making California’s drought-to-deluge cycle even more extreme.
What causes floods?
Floods happen when there’s heavy rainfall for a short burst or sustained over a period of time. As the climate crisis makes our atmosphere thirstier, major rain events are becoming increasingly intense.
Floods also happen when snow melts too fast — a big worry as the climate crisis drives increasingly wild weather swings and shortens “shoulder…
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