Just hours before the Caldor fire threatened to level the resort town of South Lake Tahoe, the massive blaze performed a staggering feat: burning from one side of the Sierra to the other.
It seared through crests and valleys, over foothills and ridges — and also at elevations of 8,000 feet or higher.
For decades, scientists have warned that climate change would disrupt almost every natural life-sustaining system on our planet. What have we done about it? We’ve dithered. We refuse to believe the evidence, or rail against the cost and inconvenience of change, or hope the problem will just go away. But global warming is not going away. Last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its most alarming report yet: Earth is on the edge of ecological bankruptcy.
A $1 trillion infrastructure bill that received bipartisan support in the Senate last month includes billions of dollars for Western water projects and programs.
The Biden administration has called the infrastructure bill, which includes $8.3 billion for Western water infrastructure, “the largest investment in the resilience of physical and natural systems in American history.”
“Mega-drought” has become a frightful “thing” in public and media discussions. In the past 1,200 years, California had two droughts lasting 120-200 years, “megadroughts” by any standard. Could the state’s water resources continue to supply enough water to drink, grow crops and provide habitat for fish with such an extreme, prolonged drought today?
Clearly, some ecosystems and rural communities would be devastated by such a drought, and it would certainly affect all California residents. But with careful management, California’s economy in many ways could substantially withstand such a severe drought.
There’s a hive of PhDs at the University of California at Davis who are working to reinvent food production in the Golden State. Researchers have fanned out across the globe collecting rare plant samples; others are grafting Frankenstein trees and stitching together root systems of plums and peaches to create better almond and walnut trees.
The Colorado River Basin is enduring two decades of drought, and water shortages are on the horizon. But scientists say this isn’t the worst-case scenario. The region has undergone longer, deeper droughts in the past. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny spoke with paleoclimatologist Matt Lachniet of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas about how knowing the past can help us plan for a warmer, drier future.
Officials say the City of San Luis Obispo is water-secure for now, despite several years of drought conditions.The City of San Luis Obispo relies on water from Santa Margarita Lake, Whale Rock Reservoir and Nacimiento Reservoir. Mychal Boerman is Deputy Director of Water for the city. He said Nacimiento’s water capacity is at 13 percent, due to low rainfall years and continuous use of the reservoir for Salinas Valley farming
The longer it takes for two new wells to be dug in Cantua Creek and El Porvenir in western Fresno County, the deeper in debt the towns are mired.
Now, with the drought, those well projects are in a race against dropping groundwater levels as farmers, cut off from surface water supplies, are leaning more heavily on the aquifer.
Thunderstorms that dropped light rain gave some breathing room to crews struggling to quench California’s massive wildfires but lightning sparked several new blazes in the drought-stricken north, fire officials said.
The storms that rolled through Thursday night into Friday were followed by weekend forecasts of clear weather and a warming trend in fire areas into next week.
Drought. Wildfires. And, for the country as a whole, temperatures worse than the Dust Bowl.
In a further bit of evidence of the reality of climate change, California has just experienced its hottest summer on record, according to data released this week by the federal government.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the average temperature in California reached 77.3 degrees from June to August. That topped the previous record of 76.5 degrees in summer 2017.
