A new study from Stanford University says that climate change driven by humans is behind the drought in California, which is affecting 98 percent of the state.
The two main weather conditions that lead to drought — higher than average temperatures and tiny amounts of rain and snow — are occurring at the same time because of climate change, the study shows. Researchers also found that the worst droughts in the state's history happened when it was dry and warm, and global warming is increasing the chance that those weather patterns will take place at the same time, USA Today reports. The study's leader, Noah Diffenbaugh, said having dry years that are also warm would not happen without human influence, like burning fossil fuels.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Parker Palm Springs review: decadence in the California desertThe Week Recommends This over-the-top hotel is a mid-century modern gem
-
The real story behind the Stanford Prison ExperimentThe Explainer 'Everything you think you know is wrong' about Philip Zimbardo's infamous prison simulation
-
Is it safe for refugees to return to Syria?Talking Point European countries rapidly froze asylum claims after Assad's fall but Syrian refugees may have reason not to rush home
-
US won its war on 'murder hornets,' officials saySpeed Read The announcement comes five years after the hornets were first spotted in the US
-
Dark energy data suggest Einstein was rightSpeed Read Albert Einstein's 1915 theory of general relativity has been proven correct, according to data collected by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument
-
New DNA tests of Pompeii dead upend popular storiesSpeed Read An analysis of skeletal remains reveals that some Mount Vesuvius victims have been wrongly identified
-
NASA's Europa Clipper blasts off, seeking an oceanSpeed Read The ship is headed toward Jupiter on a yearslong journey
-
Detailed map of fly's brain holds clues to human mindSpeed Read This remarkable fruit fly brain analysis will aid in future human brain research
-
The alarming rise of fake scienceunder the radar Fraudulent papers are flooding scientific journals
-
Blind people will listen to next week's total eclipseSpeed Read While they can't see the event, they can hear it with a device that translates the sky's brightness into music
-
Melting polar ice is messing with global timekeepingSpeed Read Ice loss caused by climate change is slowing the Earth's rotation
