This is particularly an issue for the state's 44.7 billion dollar agricultural industry, which produces nearly half of all U.S.-grown fruits, nuts, and vegetables. California's 38 million residents experienced 13 consecutive months of drought. The California Department of Water Resources planned to reduce water allocations to farmland by 50%. In February 2014, the Californian drought reached for the first time in the 54-year history of the State Water Project to shortages of water supplies. One of the reasons that the study was conducted was to ascertain whether the Owens Valley region of California could handle any practiced or proposed groundwater extraction. This means that certain plants are actually able to help prevent droughts, but can only do so if groundwater is maintained at a certain level. Although natural variability dominates, anthropogenic warming has substantially increased the overall likelihood of extreme California droughts." Logo of the Save Our Water campaignīy February 1, 2014, Felicia Marcus, the chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board, claimed the 2014 drought "is the most serious drought we've faced in modern times." Marcus argues that California needs to "conserve what little we have to use later in the year, or even in future years." Pritchett & Manning 2009 showed that the alkali meadow vegetation plant community is groundwater dependent and that this characteristic buffers the system from the effects of drought. This was confirmed by a 2015 scientific study which estimated that global warming "accounted for 8–27% of the observed drought anomaly in 2012–2014. ![]() Drought Monitor categories (2014) 2014 Īccording to the NOAA Drought Task Force report of 2014, the drought was not part of a long-term change in precipitation and was a symptom of the natural variability, although the record-high temperature that accompanied the recent drought may have been amplified due to the enhanced greenhouse effect human-induced global warming. Stafford Lehr, Chief of Fisheries within the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said that 95% of winter run salmon did not survive in 2013. Lack of rainfall had caused the mouths of rivers to be blocked off by sand bars which further prevented fish from reaching their spawning grounds. Streams and rivers were so low that fish couldn't get to their spawning grounds, and survival rates of any eggs that were laid were expected to be low. As a result of this, many fish species were threatened. Many regions of the state accumulated less rainfall in 2013 than any other year on record. In 2013, the total rainfall was less than 34% of what was expected. See also: Southwestern North American megadrought 2013 experiencing drought conditions in the fewest parts of the country since 2000. ![]() This declaration followed a series of powerful Pacific storms during the first few months of the year, which coincided with the U.S. In mid-March 2019, California was declared drought-free except for a small pocket of abnormally dry conditions in Southern California. This change was due to an exceedingly wet pattern caused by atmospheric river-enhanced Pacific storms, which caused severe flooding. īy February 2017, the state's drought percentage returned to lower levels seen before the start of the drought. The cause of the drought was attributed to a ridge of high pressure in the Pacific Sea-the " Ridiculously Resilient Ridge"-which often barred powerful winter storms from reaching the state. The drought wiped out 102 million trees from 2011 to 2016, 62 million of those during 2016 alone. The 2011–2017 California drought persisted from December 2011 to March 2017 and consisted of the driest period in California's recorded history, late 2011 through 2014. Severe drought Progression of the drought from December 2013 to July 2014
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