So we've been driving around California a bunch on our vacation, which has led to some interesting speculation, and I figured for this week's Cant that I would share it with my readers.
No, this isn't a Wanton Hussy column. It's about global warming and the effect thereof on California.
Now, if you are utterly stupid, and/or brainwashed by the right wing thought machine, you might think that global warming is not happening. However, even right-wing cretins (redundant, I know) generally acknowledge that it is, and have refined their position to it not being our fault. But if you're a conservative circa 1995 you might as well just skip this column now. Even the travel magazines are writing about places to visit now because they won't be there in ten or twenty years due to global warming. It's a fucking fact.
1) It's also our fault.
2) That's fucking sad, isn't it? Visit this national park or these tropical islands now, because they won't be there within your lifetime.
Anyhow, one of the effects of global warming will be to get rid of most or all of the glaciers in the Himalayas. Now, these glaciers feed rivers that provide a tremendous portion of the water for India and China. So they're pretty much screwed. But that got me thinking about California and its notoriously limited water supply.
California's water supply, however, is not glacier-fed. It comes from snow melt. During the winter, the Sierra Nevada mountains along the state's eastern edge get rather a lot of snow dumped on them, which melts during the summer. (It does not, as a general rule, rain in California from about May to about October. At all.) This snowmelt, augmented by a large series of reservoirs filled by winter rains, provides the water which irrigates fields and lawns and fills Californian bathtubs.
If the snow levels are low, then the state starts running into water shortages. This is not uncommon, although this year the snow levels are quite high and the winter rainfall filled all the reservoirs to capacity.
So, I think to myself, what will global warming do to change this picture?
Note that I have no scientific background in this, and that a few moments of Google searching which I am not going to do would probably turn up much more well-based material. No, this is all my pure brain.
Well, first off, it will probably mean more precipitation in general. This is because California's rain comes off of the Pacific ocean. The Pacific, in this vicinity, is generally quite cold. As such, during the summer it does not evaporate readily and does not provide any rain - in fact, it's so cold that instead you get chilly fog, which is why the coldest winter Mark Twain ever experienced was a summer in San Francisco.
A warmer ocean will probably mean more precipitation. Which may mean summer rains - shocking! - but will almost certainly mean rain later in spring, earlier in fall, and heavier in the winter. And rainfall in the high altitudes means snow, which means more snowpack.
However, if the winters are warmer as well, that means that the altitude at which one gets snow will creep higher. Which will reduce the snowpack available during the summer. I well remember watching weather reports in a California spring when the forecasters were actually regretting rain. Normally rain is received with great pleasure in a dry state, but a late rainfall meant that the rain fell atop snow and melted it early. Warmer winters thus would mean less area of snowpack, albeit probably deeper snow where it remained.
Which sums up to two pluses - more precipitation overall and a deeper snowpack - and one minus - less area of snowpack. So global warming will probably mean, for good and ill, a wetter California.
Of course, when you kick a system out of equilibrium, all sorts of things might happen. Currents could change and dramatically warm the water offshore, for instance. Or, even wackier, the jetstream could change behavior. Or violent El Nino spawned storms could begin to sock the state from the southwest. The sky's the limit, really, though the probabilities are remote.
Anyhow, looks like Californians won't have to worry about going thirsty. They'll just have to worry about the hordes of Chinese and Indians coming across the Pacific to get all that extra fresh water. Oh, and maybe the central valley flooding. But there ought to be enough to drink.
- Sun Ra