California Drought Climate Change - Over the past two decades California has been experiencing historic drought conditions, there have been more drought years than in the past century and January 2015 holds the record as the driest month the state has ever experienced.
Now scientists at Stanford University have revealed that the dry conditions is being caused by man-made climate change.
Researchers arrived at the above conclusion after studying records of California's temperatures, precipitation and drought dating as far as 1895.
Noah Diffenbaugh, an associate professor of earth system science at Stanford and his team have discovered that the chances of a drought doubles when high temperatures and dry weather periods concur, as more water evaporates.
In the study published on Monday in the US journal Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers explain that climate change causes these higher temperatures that precipitates drought.
The effects on green house gases on weather patterns were also found to increase the chances of droughts occurring.
"When we look at the historical record, not only do we see a doubling of the odds of a warm-dry year, but we also see a doubling of the frequency of drought years," said Danielle Touma, study co-author."Warm conditions reduce snowfall, increase snowmelt and increase water loss from soils and plants."
"Human emissions of greenhouse gases have increased the probability that when low precipitation years occur, that they occur with a warm environment," said Diffenbaugh."While our findings don't provide any particular recommendations. They do provide very strong evidence that global warming is already making it much more likely that California experiences conditions that are similar to what we have experienced during the current severe drought."
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