Historic wildfires raging from California to Colorado are weakening watersheds and setting the stage for deadly mudslides and flooding and, in some places, threatening to poison critical water supplies.
Climate forecasters said Thursday that the world had entered La Niña, the opposite phase of the climate pattern that also brings El Niño and affects weather across the globe. Among other impacts, La Niña has the potential this winter to worsen what are already severe drought conditions in the American Southwest.
Like millions of people in the western United States this week, I woke up to deep red, sunless skies, layers of ash coating the streets, gardens, and cars, and the smell of burning forests, lives, homes, and dreams. Not to be too hyperbolic, but on top of the political chaos, the economic collapse, and the worst pandemic in modern times, it seemed more than a little apocalyptic.
Too much of the western United States is on fire, and many areas not suffering directly from fire are enveloped in choking, acrid smoke.
Two weeks ago, the Pine Gulch Fire became the largest wildfire in Colorado history when it grew to an area nearly the size of Chicago. The 139,000-acre blaze, ignited July 31, was fueled by another record: The area where the fire occurred experienced its hottest August in at least 126 years.
La Niña — which often means a busier Atlantic hurricane season, a drier Southwest and perhaps a more fire-prone California — has popped up in the Pacific Ocean.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday that a La Niña, the cooler flip side of the better known El Niño, has formed. Meteorologists had been watching it brewing for months.
A natural cooling of certain parts of the equatorial Pacific, La Niña sets in motion a series of changes to the world’s weather that can last months, even years. This one so far is fairly weak and is projected to last through at least February but may not be the two-to-three-year type sometimes seen in the past, NOAA Climate Prediction Center Deputy Director Mike Halpert said.
La Niña conditions were observed in the Pacific Ocean last month, and there is a 75% chance the weather pattern will persist through the winter, forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
The San Francisco Bay-Delta is literally threatened from all sides: rising sea levels from the ocean, disruptions to sediment supply from upstream, and within the Bay-Delta itself, development and other land use changes have left only a tiny fraction (5%) of marshland untouched.
After an extended weekend of wildfires, part of an early fire season that has already seen a record 2 million acres burned and Death Valley-like temperatures smothering the San Fernando Valley, Californians would be right to wonder whether we are living in a hellscape. We are not, it’s safe to say. But we are living in the future that climate scientists have been trying to warn us about for years now.
In the next five years, the world has nearly a 1-in-4 chance of experiencing a year that’s hot enough to put the global temperature at 2.7 degrees (1.5 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial times, according to a new science update released Wednesday by the U.N., World Meteorological Organization and other global science groups.
A bill passed by the state Legislature and headed to the governor’s desk for his signature will strengthen and expand a marine fish hatchery program in Carlsbad, the only one of its kind on the West Coast.
The new legislation by Assemblywoman Tasha Boerner Horvath will update the program and allow it to breed more of the native California species that have been depleted by commercial and recreational fishing over the years.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
