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NASA: California has one year of water left

TheWalkingGhost · 2015-03-14 03:50:07

http://www.newsweek.com/nasa-california-has-one-year-water-left-313647Plagued by prolonged drought, California now has only enough water to get it through the next year, according to NASA.In an op-ed published Thursday by the Los Angeles Times, Jay Famiglietti, a senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, painted a dire picture of the state's water crisis. California, he writes, has lost around 12 million acre-feet of stored water every year since 2011. In the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins, the combined water sources of snow, rivers, reservoirs, soil water and groundwater amounted to a volume that was 34 million acre-feet below normal levels in 2014. And there is no relief in sight.'As our 'wet' season draws to a close, it is clear that the paltry rain and snowfall have done almost nothing to alleviate epic drought conditions. January was the driest in California since record-keeping began in 1895. Groundwater and snowpack levels are at all-time lows' Famiglietti writes. 'We're not just up a creek without a paddle in California, we're losing the creek too.'On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that one-third of the monitoring stations in California’s Cascades and Sierra Nevada mountains have recorded the lowest snowpack ever measured.'Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing,” Famiglietti writes.He criticized Californian officials for their lack of long-term planning for how to cope with this drought, and future droughts, beyond 'staying in emergency mode and praying for rain.'Last month, new research by scientists at NASA, Cornell University and Columbia University pointed to abut hey.. 'remarkably drier future' for California and other Western states amid a rapidly-changing climate. 'Megadroughts,' the study's authors wrote, are likely to begin between 2050 and 2099, and could each last between 10 years and several decades.With that future in mind, Famiglietti says, 'immediate mandatory water rationing' should be implemented in the state, accompanied by the swift formation of regulatory agencies to rigorously monitor groundwater and ensure that it is being used in a sustainable way—as opposed to the 'excessive and unsustainable' groundwater extraction for agriculture that, he says, is partly responsible for massive groundwater losses that are causing land in the highly irrigated Central Valley to sink by one foot or more every year.Various local ordinances have curtailed excessive water use for activities like filling fountains and irrigating lawns. But planning for California's 'harrowing future' of more and longer droughts 'will require major changes in policy and infrastructure that could take decades to identify and act upon,' Famiglietti writes. 'Today, not tomorrow, is the time to begin.'Time for mass migration. California is screwed, Why do Mexicans want to come to this dust bowl again?

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Dogswithguns

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#51 Dogswithguns

Member since 2007 • 11359 Posts

So, California gonna turn into a desert state?!... I heard Brazil is too having shortage of water, big time.

9 years ago

jun_aka_pekto

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#52 Edited By jun_aka_pekto

Member since 2010 • 25255 Posts

@Toph_Girl250 said:

I hear ya man, while vacationing here in Cali for a while, I have come to the conclusion that you and me may be better off in Florida, well, at least in terms of still being in a place with good tropical weather and palm trees. I mean its okay if you don't consider Florida one of your first choices, but I'd prefer being in a place with warm weather and palm trees, and with more beaches and water nearby, where I am it feels much too dry, and too much dry desert land surrounding me.

The land east of the Coastal Mountain Range might become a desert. I doubt the California coast will become a desert though. The hotter interior may cause the sea breeze to become stronger, keeping the coastal regions lush.

Heck. Even Somalia has its lush areas along the coast.

From someone named La Princessa:

http://laprincessaworld.blogspot.com/2011/10/somewhere-in-somalia.html