A new report from Cal/EPA chronicles how climate change is reshaping California’s physical and biological systems, including the state’s water resources.
Mountain lakes are getting warmer, extreme droughts and floods are becoming more common, springtime runoff is coming earlier, and ocean levels are rising, according to a comprehensive report released Thursday by Cal/EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.
To draw its findings, the report used 36 environmental indicators — a combination of monitoring data and scientific studies — to update an earlier 2009 report on the same topic.
“Together, these indicators paint a disturbing picture of how climate change is affecting our state and its growing threats to our future,” OEHHA Director Dr. George Alexeeff stated.
Besides water, the study looks at how global warming is contributing to more severe and prevalent wildfires, increased air and surface temperatures, changing habitat and mortality patterns among plants and animals, and more extreme weather events.
Here are a few of the many water-related observations contained in the report:
There hasn’t been a discernible change in snow-water content statewide, but the amount has declined in the northern Sierra Nevada and increased in the southern part of the mountain range, “likely reflecting difference in precipitation patterns.”
Conditions are warming at high altitudes. During the past 20 years, the altitude at which temperatures drop below freezing has risen by about 500 feet, the report said, potentially affecting the state’s snowpack.
More precipitation is falling as rain instead of snow, partly contributing to less and earlier springtime runoff. The date of peak snowmelt in California has shifted 2.5 weeks earlier since 1961, the report said.
Mountain glaciers in California have retreated 20%-70% during the past century, while sea levels went up an average of 7 inches on California’s coast.
Officials said California is one of the first states to compile its own set of indicators to assess climate change. In May, Gov. Jerry Brown joined thousands of scientists in signing a “consensus statement” proclaiming that there is “overwhelming” evidence that human action is damaging Earth’s life support systems.
“Whether you live in California, Texas or Timbuktu, climate change is real, and it’s long past time for action,” Brown said upon the release of CAL/EPA’s report Thursday.
Access the report at the OEHHA website here.
From ACWA