![]() As temperatures rise, more precipitation falls as rain and less as snow, and the snowpack melts more quickly in the late spring and early summer. “Snow drought” also plays a key role in California, 30% of whose water supply originates from the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains. This prediction was borne out in a 2021 study published in Geophysical Research Letters, with researchers finding that “the precipitation season has become shorter and sharper in California” since the 1960s. Dwindling soil moisture is known as “agricultural drought,” and is exacerbated by the increased evaporation and transfer of moisture from land to the atmosphere that comes about in a warming climate.Ī lack of rain and snow is called “meteorological drought.” A 2018 study in Nature Climate Change used climate models to predict that California’s precipitation patterns will shift in a hotter world, with more rain falling in the winter but less in spring and fall months, lengthening the state’s dry season. There are several different kinds of drought, all worsened by human activity. The drought conditions led Utah Governor Spencer Cox recently to urge the state’s residents of all faiths to hold a “weekend of prayer” for rain. is currently experiencing drought conditions, including the entire states of Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. It’s not just California 96% of the western U.S. Changing climate is supercharging southwestern droughtsĪccording to the 2020 study in Science cited earlier, human-caused climate change made southwestern drought conditions between 20 about 46% more intense than they would have been naturally, “pushing an otherwise moderate drought onto a trajectory comparable to the worst megadroughts since 800 CE,” the heyday of the Mayan civilization. Given the lack of water in 2021, some farmers have been forced to resort to tearing out valuable almond trees and instead planting less thirsty crops.Ībout 80% of the state’s developed water use goes to the agriculture industry, so anyone who enjoys eating fruits and nuts should be concerned that climate change is increasing the odds of megadroughts permanently drying California. But nut trees are water-intensive (though notably less so than the alfalfa and pastureland grown for animal agriculture), and unlike seasonal crops, they cannot be fallowed in a dry year. About 80% of all almonds in the world are grown in California: The state’s almonds alone generate $6 billion annually. ![]() California produces nearly all of the almonds, artichokes, avocados, broccoli, carrots, celery, kiwi, figs, garlic, grapes, raisins, raspberries, strawberries, honeydew melons, nectarines, olives, pistachios, plums, tangerines, mandarins, and walnuts grown in the U.S. The state’s agricultural industry generates $50 billion each year, which is more than the entire gross domestic products of Vermont and Wyoming, and as large as the economy of Alaska or Montana. California is effectively America’s garden – it produces two-thirds of all fruits and nuts grown in the U.S. The consequences of drought in California are felt well outside the state’s borders.
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