Co-occurring California droughts and northeast Pacific marine heatwaves to become dramatically more frequent, study says

Exceptional drought drove a decline in water levels at Lake Oroville, northern California’s second-largest state reservoir. Credit: NOAA

From 2013–2016, an exceptional California drought coincided with unprecedented northeast Pacific marine heatwaves, leading to significant social-economical-ecological impacts—including a roughly $170 million economic loss from the Dungeness crab fishery closure. And now a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, partially funded by CPO’s Modeling, Analysis, Predictions and Projections (MAPP) program, found that under global warming, co-occurring extreme warm northeast Pacific ocean and dry California conditions will become dramatically more frequent by the end of the 21st century.

Read more at the link below.