Atmospheric rivers, generally abbreviated as ARs, aren’t really rainstorms themselves. Somewhat, they’re a product of the earth’s heat-balancing act, the pure technique of transferring warmth and moisture from the tropics to increased latitudes. It’s solely when an atmospheric river combines with a Pacific storm that ARs turn out to be energized into super-storms.
A lot of California enjoys a light Mediterranean local weather the place the climate usually swings like a pendulum from heat, dry summers to chill, moist winters. If it doesn’t swing towards rain and snow between October and March, it results in drought; if it does, we’d see record-breaking precipitation. Whereas the pendulum has at all times swung right here, there’s proof that its swings at the moment are getting extra dramatic.
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Atmospheric rivers are nothing in need of a miracle for California. However local weather change is altering their character. The native impacts of world warming are making us constantly grapple with both drought, deluge or each on the identical time. Can we depend on these miracle-working storms anymore? Are the miracles of atmospheric rivers turning right into a menace?
The reason for El Niño has been revealed solely slowly, piece by piece over a century, as devoted researchers in far-flung places searched for explanations for the droughts and deluges they witnessed.
Historic and buried riverbeds can transfer and take up extra stormwater, storing it for future droughts. Known as paleo valleys, these buried historic riverbeds are nonetheless the paths water desires to journey underground, like slow-motion rivers. Their excessive permeability means they’ll take up about 60 instances extra water than the encircling clay. Aquifers, that are higher recognized, additionally maintain water in coarse soils. However the paleo valleys born of the latest glaciations are actually particular.
Lots of people ask what it takes to make it rain in California, and the reply depends on a bewildering number of inputs, a few of them very complicated and really far-off. Probably the most intriguing, and least understood, is a climate phenomenon known as the Madden-Julian Oscillation, or MJO, a big tropical system of clouds, rainfall and wind patterns—think about a touring storminess—that takes 30 to 60 days on common to work its manner throughout the globe.
Statistically, October rain doesn’t depend a lot towards Northern California’s annual rainfall. In a area that averages 20-40 inches of rain a yr, even a really moist October would possibly solely be 10 % of the full quantity. However October’s rainfall performs an outsized position in figuring out the character of a yr due to its affect on each fireplace and agriculture.
Involved about our feathered buddies within the midst of latest rainstorms? Visitor naturalist Josiah Clark reveals how seabirds, songbirds, raptors, waterbirds and others deal with the stormy climate.