{"id":9138,"date":"2015-06-16T05:53:24","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T10:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9138"},"modified":"2015-06-16T05:53:24","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T10:53:24","slug":"beyond-the-perfect-drought-californias-real-water-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9138","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Perfect Drought: California\u2019s Real Water Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/e360.yale.edu\/feature\/beyond_the_perfect_drought_californias_real_water_crisis\/2885\/\" target=\"_blank\">Beyond the Perfect Drought:\u00a0California\u2019s Real Water Crisis<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"dek\"><strong><em>The record-breaking drought in California is not chiefly the result of low precipitation. Three factors \u2013 rising temperatures, groundwater depletion, and a shrinking Colorado River \u2013 mean the most populous U.S. state will face decades of water shortages and must adapt.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">The current drought afflicting California is indeed historic, but not because of the low precipitation totals. In fact, in terms of overall precipitation and spring snowpack, the past three years are not record-breakers, according to weather data for the past century. Similarly, paleoclimate studies show that the current drought is not exceptional given the natural variations in precipitation of the past seven centuries. Nor can it be confidently said that the current drought bears the unequivocal imprint of climate change\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"imageleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/e360.yale.edu\/images\/features\/475039540-250.jpg\" alt=\"Oroville Lake\" width=\"250px\" height=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"credit\">Mark Ralston\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/div>\n<div class=\"caption\">The Lake Oroville reservoir in Northern California was at less than 25 percent capacity last month.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">driven by increasing greenhouse gases, since the low precipitation is well within the bounds of natural variability.<\/p>\n<p>All this being said, it is also clear that this drought is exceptional and should be seen as an historical turning point. Indeed, California is moving into new \u2014 and worrisome \u2014 territory for three reasons: rising heat, which causes increased evaporation; the continuing depletion of groundwater supplies; and growing water shortages on the Colorado River, the main external source of water for Southern California.<\/p>\n<p>A decade ago, I first wrote about California and the \u201cperfect drought.\u201d Now, unless bold steps are taken to deal with a growing water crisis, California may be facing a future of perfect droughts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beyond the Perfect Drought:\u00a0California\u2019s Real Water Crisis The record-breaking drought in California is not chiefly the result of low precipitation. Three factors \u2013 rising temperatures, groundwater depletion, and a shrinking Colorado River \u2013 mean the most populous U.S. state will face decades of water shortages and must adapt. The current drought afflicting California is indeed [&hellip;]<\/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":[101,141,220,369,6402,6401,866,4628,1219,6403],"class_list":["post-9138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-california","tag-climate-change","tag-drought","tag-global-warming","tag-paleoclimate-studies","tag-precipitation","tag-water","tag-water-restrictions","tag-weather","tag-weather-data"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9138","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=9138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9139,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9138\/revisions\/9139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}