Center for Climate Science

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Climate change puts California’s snowpack under the weather

The Sierra Nevada snowpack, which provides 60 percent of the state’s water via a vast network of dams and reservoirs, has already been diminished by human-induced climate change and if emissions levels aren’t reduced, the snowpack could largely disappear during droughts, according to findings in the study published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.



Oroville Dam crisis could be sign of things to come

The recent crisis at Oroville Dam sheds light on an emerging problem for California's aging water resources infrastructure. Professor Alex Hall's research shows that, as temperatures warm in the Sierra Nevada, climate change could precipitate a deluge that will overwhelm a patchwork network of dams and reservoirs that supply 60 percent of the state's water.