Climate change could mean a much wetter Calif.
By Carolyn Wilke, Sacramento Bee
Californians have been bracing themselves for a drier future accompanying a warming climate. But research by scientists at the University of California, Riverside, suggests that the state may actually get wetter in the event of severe climate change.
The study, published July 6 in Nature Communications, reports that more years in the state could look like El Niño ones, when California typically has wetter winters.
The authors found that average annual precipitation in California could increase by about 12 percent if nothing is done to curb carbon emissions. Average precipitation in the winter could increase by as much as 30 percent. A wetter climate, however, might not offset the overwhelmingly negative effects of a warming climate.
