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A look at the past suggests atmospheric rivers inundating California could get worse

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2024-05-07 21:00:18

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A team of paleoclimatologists with the U.S. Geological Survey, NASA Ames Research Park, has found that atmospheric rivers in the past have dumped far more rain on California than those that have occurred over the past two years.

In their paper published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, the group describes their study of sediment core samples collected from the bottom of Leonard Lake, in northern California.

Over the past two winters, parts of California have seen much more rain than is normal for the region. The reason for it has been the creation of what have come to be called atmospheric rivers over parts of the Pacific Ocean, which dump wave after wave of rain as they move over land.

Prior research has suggested that atmospheric rivers used to be more common in the region, and may have resulted in more rain than has been seen in modern times. Such studies have suggested that if certain conditions develop, more atmospheric rivers could form in the future, and that they could be bigger, leading to more rainfall than has been seen thus far.