On the Coast: Before and After the Parade of Atmospheric Rivers – Planet Snapshots issue 59 via Medium
California is left drenched, flooded, and perhaps a little hopeful after recurring atmospheric rivers pummeled the state for 2 weeks straight. The rains are a small reprieve for the area’s years-long drought. But the sheer volume of rainfall was much more than the parched landscape could handle. With a turn of the faucet, the state went from too dry to too wet in what’s called a “weather whiplash,” transforming the Golden State to shades of brown…
How Do California’s Storms Weigh In Compared With History’s Big Ones? – the New York Times
The storms that have walloped California in fierce waves since last month have left many communities cleaning up and digging out from flooding and landslides. By one metric, though, the state has seen much worse…
Global Weather Patterns and Coastlines
Coasts are sensitive to sea level rise, changes in the frequency and intensity of storms, increases in precipitation, and warmer ocean temperatures. In addition, rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing the oceans to absorb more of the gas and become more acidic. This rising acidity can have significant impacts on coastal and marine ecosystems.
The impacts of climate change are likely to worsen problems that coastal areas already face. Confronting existing challenges that affect man-made infrastructure and coastal ecosystems, such as shoreline erosion, coastal flooding, and water pollution, is already a concern in many areas. Addressing the additional stress of climate change may require new approaches to managing land, water, waste, and ecosystems…
‘Inside we are all struggling’: storm-bruised California begins recovery – the Guardian
From hillside towns like Felton to the picturesque coastal enclave of Capitola, the long road to recovery from disaster is only beginning. The county was declared a major disaster zone by Joe Biden, who visited Capitola on Thursday to survey the damage and said it would “take years to rebuild”…
Atmospheric rivers hitting California will become even more intense. Here’s how they work – the San Francisco Chronicle
The same weather that replenishes California water supplies could bring the next megaflood.
A procession of storms is drenching Northern California this week, with rainfall already topping 2 inches in San Francisco and surpassing 8 inches in the Santa Cruz Mountains. More precipitation is on tap through the weekend, prompting concerns of widespread urban flooding and potential landslides…
What Will ‘Weather Whiplash’ Mean for California? – the New York Times
California is built upon the great gamble of irrigation. Left alone, much of the land in the Western United States would be inhospitable to teeming cities. But we’re Americans — we couldn’t let the desert stand in our way.
More than a century ago, the United States Bureau of Land Reclamation began taming the water in the West…
What are atmospheric rivers? – NOAA
Atmospheric rivers are relatively long, narrow regions in the atmosphere – like rivers in the sky – that transport most of the water vapor outside of the tropics. These columns of vapor move with the weather, carrying an amount of water vapor roughly equivalent to the average flow of water at the mouth of the Mississippi River. When the atmospheric rivers make landfall, they often release this water vapor in the form of rain or snow…
‘Rivers in the Sky’: How Atmospheric Rivers Control Nearly All of Earth’s Precipitation – Popular Mechanics
“Atmospheric rivers are literally rivers in the sky, the rivers of water vapor that transport massive amounts of water in the atmosphere,” Marty Ralph, a hydrometeorologist, tells Popular Mechanics. Ralph is the founding director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, where he has pioneered research on how atmospheric rivers influence the West Coast…
What exactly is an Atmospheric River? – USGS Communication
Atmospheric rivers have been in the news a lot over the past couple of months, from a late October atmospheric river that brought record-breaking rainfall across Northern California to a mid-November storm that led to catastrophic flooding in Washington. A new atmospheric river storm is hitting the Western U.S. now and more are likely on their way. But what exactly is an atmospheric river?