Climate change is rapidly accelerating in California, state report says
California’s drought is ‘likely to persist’ for another five years
By Richard Black
9 March 2020
A new California climate report issued on Tuesday by the state’s four main political parties, is full of claims that are based on a misrepresentation of the state’s recent climate history. In particular, the report claims that California was experiencing its worst drought since records began in the 1930s because of unprecedented drought conditions, a claim that contradicts what is known about California’s climate history.
The report, titled “California’s Climate Change and Drought: A National, State and Critical Region Report,” was issued by the California Department of Water Resources, the California Energy Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission, and the state attorney general, the report claims, because the state’s “climate is rapidly changing due to impacts of human activity.”
The California Climate Change and Drought Report is a project of the State Water Resources Control Board led by the American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Park Service, and the National Ocean Service. It was compiled by two state and two federal agencies, and was commissioned by the governor’s Office of Emergency Services and California’s Climate Commission, an independent body formed in the wake of the 2017 California wildfires, which are widely considered to “spark” the current drought.
The report claims that California was experiencing its worst drought since records began in the 1930s because of “unprecedented drought” conditions. This is contradicted by the record of the state’s historical drought. California was experiencing its worst drought in the 1930s, and was “in the middle of a drought in the 1930s that was the worst on record,” according to Michael Connor of the Center for the Study of the California Land Use & Environmental History, one of the report’s authors and the author of the California Drought Study.
The report claims that California is experiencing its worst drought since records began in the 1930s because of “unprecedented drought” conditions
The report claims that California is experiencing
