IIRC, increased global temperatures will lead to more global rainfall, but the rainfall will distributed in different areas than it is now. The problem is that people live where the water is now. And moving to where it will be later is non-trivial if you’re not rich. And if it rains a lot in the middle of the Pacific, I’m not sure that helps anyone. Also there is more evaporation, so you could end up in a situation where a lot of water is just in the atmosphere (i.e. humidity), which you can’t use for drinking, etc.
Also if you get too much somewhere, then you get flooding and the associated problems.
I could be way off on above. I read about it a long time ago and didn’t check. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone comes along and says it’s totally wrong.
A study by the journal Science Advances reported climate change has doubled the chances of major flooding happening in California in the next four decades.
“In the future scenario, the storm sequence is bigger in almost every respect,” said Daniel Swain, UCLA climate scientist who co-authored the study. “There’s more rain overall, more intense rainfall on an hourly basis and stronger wind.”
Also more rain in the tropics means more storms, more floods, and possibly* more hurricanes/typhoons/cyclones.
'* hotter oceans should lead to more frequent, more powerful hurricanes, but some models suggests there will be fewer, or else that its non linear. And there arent enough storms every year to really draw any clear conclusions so theres a bunch of debate.
Has anyone seen the projections on what this would do to Southern California? I’ve read three articles and they all said LA and Orange Counties would be impacted but gave no details.
SoCal has put in extensive flood controls, but there are some large low lying areas in OC around Huntington Beach, and if the flood control is overwhelmed the LA Basin is pretty flat. But there is a lot of capacity for draining LA.
Says that one was a 50 year flood, and the other is a 100 year flood. Which, incidentally, always seemed like a very illogical reason to say some weather event is “overdue”. Isn’t that just gambler’s fallacy? Shouldn’t the odds of a 100 year flood next year be exactly the same as this year, and every other year?
It’s a pity we ran DS off. He lives for this stuff.
Thanks, I’ll have to do more research if I ever end up moving out there, which is a possibility. Wouldn’t want to buy a house that was inevitably going to be flooded in a climate event.
Based on drought, or…? Seems like LA County does OK on that heat map, and should avoid a lot of the worst weather (hurricanes and tornadoes). I’d mainly be moving there for career reasons, but would want to find as stable of an area as possible climate wise.
Near the beach on the West Coast anywhere all the way down to San Diego is among the least hot places in the country. Expensive of course. It’s not hard to be close to the beach and away from floods or sea level rise. To go somewhere that has a lower max temp and is not right on the ocean you have to go like all the way to Alaska or above like 8000 feet in altitude. Absolute temps might not be hotter in the very Northeast, but with the humidity it’s worse.
Drought is bad here, but I don’t know what that will mean for people other than not being able to water lawns.
Now if you don’t have enough money to be close to the ocean…it’s pretty hot.
And there are some places not too far from the beach in, say, Long Beach or San Pedro, that aren’t that expensive.
Now if the ocean currents change and the West Coast starts getting current coming from the South (like they do on the East Coast), our weather is probably going to be all humid and full of hurricanes too.
eta: Portland Maine has a higher average temp in the hottest month than Manhattan Beach, CA.
Yeah, drought. It’s a desert that can only support 25 million people thanks to a massive network of dams and aqueducts that suck all the water out of rivers hundreds of miles away, and they’re all drying up. So if you can afford to live right near the coast (but not too close) and pay for desalinated drinking water, and you don’t mind being in a desert where all the green stuff has died, southern CA might still be ok, I guess? I mean, it’s basically a horribly sprawled out Tel Aviv at that point, but with even less rain. And much more frequent earthquakes.