January 11, NEW YORK — The western U.S. state of California will experience a “parade of storms” next week. In addition to heavy storms that have killed at least 17 people, caused flooding, outages of power, and mandated evacuations and school closures all along the coast.
According to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, a drier climate doesn’t appear at least until January 20.
Wet winters and dry summers are the norms for California’s coastal climate, but there is a lot of variation in that pattern. There have been periods of great drought and exceptional wetness, according to the historical record and paleoclimatological studies looking at patterns across millennia.
“We have grown acclimated to pretty dry circumstances in recent years, and many winters in most of California didn’t feel much like winter,” Swain said. “And in the longer context, that is both rare and ordinary.”
It’s too early to judge if this recent string of winter storms represents a wider shift brought on by climate change or merely the result of bad luck. Overall, though, “the state’s weather is getting more varied and intense, which is a long-predicted result of global warming,” the research noted. This is according to climate scientists.
Climate warming, according to Swain, has likely already increased the likelihood of an extremely catastrophic storm sequence in California by double. “During an extremely dry period, that risk has silently increased in the background.”
