{"id":7266,"date":"2015-04-12T08:40:24","date_gmt":"2015-04-12T13:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7266"},"modified":"2015-04-12T08:40:24","modified_gmt":"2015-04-12T13:40:24","slug":"californias-record-breaking-heat-drought-is-only-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7266","title":{"rendered":"California’s Record-Breaking Heat & Drought “Is Only The Beginning”"},"content":{"rendered":"

California’s Record-Breaking Heat & Drought “Is Only The Beginning”<\/a><\/h3>\n

The California heat of the past 12 months is\u00a0like nothing ever seen in records going back to 1895<\/strong>, notes\u00a0Bloomberg’s Tom Randall,\u00a0<\/a>and with the already record-low snowpack starting its melt early,\u00a0“we aren’t nearing the end of California’s climate troubles. We’re nearing the beginning.”<\/em>What’s happening in California right now is\u00a0shattering modern temperature measurements<\/strong>\u00a0– as well as tree-ring records that stretch\u00a0back more than 1,000 years<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

What makes this drought so troubling,\u00a0as Bloomberg reports,\u00a0<\/a>is that\u00a0while the 4.5 degree above-normal temps that California has seen are unprecedented; they are not entirely unexpected.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The International Panel on Climate Change, with more than 1,300 scientists, forecasts global temperatures to\u00a0rise anywhere from 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century<\/a>, depending largely on how quickly humans reduce dependence on fossil fuels.<\/div>\n

The chart below shows average temperatures for the 12 months through March 31, for each year going back to 1895.<\/strong>\u00a0The orange line shows the trend rising roughly 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit per decade, just a bit faster than the warming trend observed worldwide.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The last 12 months were a full 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5 Celsius) above the 20th century average<\/strong>. Doesn’t sound like much? When measuring average temperatures, day and night, over extended periods of time, it’s extraordinary. On a planetary scale, just 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit is what separates the hottest year ever recorded (2014) from the coldest (1911).<\/p>\n

California’s drought<\/strong>\u00a0has already withered pastures and forced farmers to uproot orchards and fallow farmland. It’s\u00a0costing the state billions each year that it goes on.<\/strong>\u00a0Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order this month for the first mandatory statewide water restrictions in U.S. history, with $10,000-a-day penalties against water agencies that fail to reduce water use by 25 percent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

California’s Record-Breaking Heat & Drought “Is Only The Beginning” The California heat of the past 12 months is\u00a0like nothing ever seen in records going back to 1895, notes\u00a0Bloomberg’s Tom Randall,\u00a0and with the already record-low snowpack starting its melt early,\u00a0“we aren’t nearing the end of California’s climate troubles. We’re nearing the beginning.”What’s happening in California right […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[101,141,220,369,866],"class_list":["post-7266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-california","tag-climate-change","tag-drought","tag-global-warming","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7267,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7266\/revisions\/7267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}