
El Niño-like weather increases California precipitation in response to warming - Mz
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms16055
======
Aloha
Color me a little skeptical - but I remember a big noise about how the drought
that california was intensified by climate change.. I mean I guess its
possible that the drought and increased rainfall are caused by the same thing.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/21/science/climate-change-
in...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/21/science/climate-change-intensifies-
california-drought-scientists-say.html)

When I look at the weather patterns California has had over the last 5-10
years, I see something that fits within the historical norms for the state.

~~~
ricw
The climate predictions are exactly that: longer droughts and more rainfall
when it does happen. Source: life partner who studies climate science...

~~~
rdtsc
In a few words what is the general model to explain it?

Is it because the atmosphere becomes a better heat sink so it can store more
energy? And then consequently release more of it?

~~~
js8
I am no expert, but I think the general intuition is that more energy means
more violent fluctuations due to dynamical nature of weather. Just like water
that is being more heated has stronger turbulences in it.

More specifically, extreme events in the moderate latitudes are explained by
slowdown and amplification of Rosby waves:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rossby_wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rossby_wave)

------
neuronexmachina
Interesting, I hadn't previously known about this modeling result from the
introduction:

> In response to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs), climate
> models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) versions 3 and
> 5 indicate decreases in precipitation in the subtropics and increases in
> middle to high latitudes.

~~~
pavement
Yup, deserts move and in some areas expand. Tropical weather moves toward the
poles, or even dominates all latitudes. Tundra disappears. Ice caps disappear.

Some of this depends on geography, and local terrain features. Lake effect
precipitation or thermal activity against natural rock faces and outcroppings,
which can change with tectonic activity. A silver lining is that new areas
become eligible for rain forests, but only across geologic time scales. Not
like next decade.

Desertification, on the other hand, progresses sometimes within a generation.

Mass death tends to move faster than flourishing growth, since growth
explosions are rare outside of viral growth, algae blooms and invasive species
(or biblical plagues like locusts) which tend to be bad things. Asian carp and
huge jellyfish are neat, but humans dislike them, despite being generally
successful amid new conditions or otherwise invasive.

------
sitkack
Time to move back!

------
ntelson1s
On a planet with a surface ~3/4 covered in water, I've always just assumed
since I was young that hotter weather would just mean more intense water
cycles. Anywhere not landlocked on the wrong side of a watershed could stand
to benefit from the extra humidity. Hopefully California can actually make use
of this. There was recent rainfall the past couple years, but they have a long
way to come in terms of infrastructure and also dealing with their eco laws at
arms with building more reservoirs and other means of avoiding the fluctuating
seasons of dry and wet.

It reminded me constantly of John Steinbeck on the drought cycle in the
Salinas Valley, “During the dry years, the people forgot about the rich years,
and when the wet years returned, they lost all memory of the dry years. It was
always that way.”

For anyone who hasn't, I highly recommend checking out the drone footage of
the Oroville dam. The scale of destruction was massive, and rumor has it even
sparked a tiny gold rush after so much bedrock and sediment was churned up.

[http://imgur.com/gallery/mpUge](http://imgur.com/gallery/mpUge)

~~~
tracker1
That was my thought as well... I've even heard statements that a 2 degree
raise in temperatures globally could be great for food production by pushing
the good growing zones outward toward more land mass...

\-- edit I'm not denying climate change, or that humans are a factor (even if
relatively small).. I'm against pollution in general, And current projections
to my understanding are about 50 years of minor cooling, followed by 150 years
of warming to about 2 degrees hotter. It's not a "solved" issue. And I'm fine
with anti-pollution stances and policies. I am not okay with using alarmist
propaganda to sell anti-pollution, and then setting up systems to reward that
behavior.

~~~
s_kilk
> 2 degree raise in temperatures globally could be great for food
> production...

Bear in mind that the 2-degree figure is 2-degrees celcius __average__ global
temperature, not two degrees maximum. The oceans are much cooler than land,
and the further inland you go the hotter it gets, so at about 2-degrees
average warming you've got maybe +3 degrees in Britain, and about +7 degrees
Celcius in central USA, which would have catastrophic effects on food
production.

Now add in the pressure of vast numbers of people migrating North away from
the equator because they're all literally starving, and you've got a formula
for civilisation-ending instability.

[EDIT] Also, bear in mind it's two degrees Celcius, which is about 3.6 degrees
Farenheit, I've seen American friends get mixed up on that point, misjudging
the severity by a factor of almost two.

------
untangle
TL;DR: "Although models possess uncertainties, including possible
overestimation of tropical convection, our results suggest future GHG-induced
warming may lead to an increase in CA precipitation."

GHG = Greenhouse Gas

------
matt_wulfeck
Well which is it folks? Global warming is going to cause an extreme drought,
or it's going to cause a rain bonanza? These researchers are starting to get
lazy are blaming every change in the wind on warming.

~~~
phkahler
Your comment will certainly get downvoted here for several reasons. 1) No
useful content 2) Pure sarcasm 3) being a bit AGW. Having said that, I have to
agree with your sentiment.

Just two years ago the news was all about how the CA drought was all because
of carbon emissions and global warming. At least this paper does not do a full
flip-flop and claim the recent precipitation is due to GW. It suggests the
future may have higher or lower precipitation and large uncertainty - perhaps
large variability due to the region being near a transition. Regardless of
what its trying to say, it can be viewed through an AGW lens as "we fucked up
last time, but here's why and BTW it's still all from CO2."

My take away is just that modeling this stuff is really hard and they aren't
there yet.

~~~
abritinthebay
Remember: CA is _STILL_ in a drought (mostly just SoCal, but still). It's just
had a _really good_ winter season that means it's likely to be not the utter
trash fire the last few summers were.

For years CA has got worse and worse drought wise - one great year of rain
that brought the state back from Exceptional and Extreme drought levels
_across almost the entire state_ to still Abnormal or Severe in about 25% of
the state is really just a blip.

Like... one year is a data-point, not a pattern, and even if CA gets more rain
in the winter it would appear to be getting hotter in the summer which is
_really not good_.

~~~
djrogers
> it would appear to be getting hotter in the summer

Hasn’t really been the case this year so far.

~~~
abritinthebay
We're like... 6 days into July. The hottest period in CA weather is July-
September. Somewhat early to call.

Plus, again, the rain and weather in winter and spring is _record breakingly
anomalous_ this year. So "this year so far" is not really a sane comparison.

The trend _overall_ has been clear. Using this year is like when people say
"we had record snowfall in upstate NY this year, so much for global warming,
nyuk nyuk". It doesn't follow.

