SAN FRANCISCO — In the midst of a two-decade mega-drought that climate scientists say has been made worse because of rising global temperatures, California has been hit with an especially cold and wet winter, in which low temperature records have been set and the Sierra snowpack is poised to eclipse its all-time high.
But the whiplash from one extreme to another is consistent with climate change, experts say. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, California's average temperatures have risen between 2-4 degrees Fahrenheit, and the dramatic variability seen in recent years is a consequence of that fact.
So, while some parts of Southern California saw rare blizzard conditions last week, and snow fell at low unusually elevations in places like the Bay Area, those unusual events in no way disprove climate change, which is measured over a longer time horizon than a single week, month or season. Nor do the brutal cold snaps show that climate change is simultaneously causing the world to undergo cooling.
For California, climate scientists like Swain believe that the state's extreme weather of late is a manifestation of the Clausius-Clapeyron equation.
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