【《We Chinese in America》Media Editor Tang Zhao, August 26, 2022】As California struggles with severe drought, global warming has doubled the likelihood that weather conditions will unleash a devastating deluge capable of displacing up to 10 million people in a $1-trillion disaster larger than any in world history. (Photo Credit:  Grist.com)

California has been struck by giant atmospheric-river-fueled storms before. A particularly devastating one in 1861-62 transformed the Central Valley into an inland sea, and Sacramento was flooded so severely that Gov. Leland Stanford had to take a rowboat to his inaugural events in January 1862, according to the Sacramento History Museum. The State Legislature also temporarily moved to San Francisco.

The state has since dammed up its rivers and built bypasses to whisk floodwaters away from population centers. If that 19th-century storm hit today, all of this infrastructure would make it less likely to cause destruction. Still, the state is also far more developed — with bigger cities, more valuable farms and businesses, and many more people — which means the consequences could still be great.

In Lathrop, near Stockton, the River Islands planned community sits in an area on the San Joaquin River that flooded terribly during a 1997 storm. The developer built extra-wide levees, without using government funds, to protect the charming homes and tidy streets.

Many home buyers were from the Bay Area and asked tough questions about schools and life in the Central Valley. Yet, they never ask questions about flooding as they don’t even realize there’s a risk.

New research by climate scientists has found that the risk of a monthlong superstorm, one that would pummel both Northern and Southern California with rain and snow in astounding quantities, is rising rapidly because of human-caused global warming. The chances each year of one occurring are already around one in 50, the study estimates. And the likelihood keeps growing the more we pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Warmer air holds more moisture, which means atmospheric rivers — the storms that sweep in from the Pacific and are sometimes called “Pineapple Express” events — can carry bigger payloads of precipitation.

California is also working to strengthen levees in urban areas of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys to provide protection against 200-year storms, or those with a 0.5 percent chance of occurring in any year.

(Source: New York Times)

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