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California from drought to deluge

Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 465–468 (2017)Cite this article

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The dramatic switch from extreme drought to severe flooding in California, and the accompanying flip from atmospheric ridge to trough in the northeastern Pacific, exemplifies the pathways to an intensified water cycle under a warming climate.

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Figure 1: Dipole pattern from one extreme to the other.
Figure 2: Correlation maps of the November–January precipitation with the dipole index.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by US Department of Energy grant DESC0016605, SERDP grant W912HQ-17-P-0013, the USU Agricultural Experiment Station (paper #9007), and Korea's Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation NRF-2017R1A2B4007480.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth Sciences and Environmental Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju, 61005, South Korea

    Jin-Ho Yoon

  2. NOAA Climate Prediction Center and INNOVIM, College Park, 20740, Maryland, USA

    Emily Becker

  3. Utah Climate Center, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, USA

    S.-Y. Simon Wang & Robert Gillies

  4. Department of Plants, Soils and Climate, Utah State University, Logan, USA, 84322, Utah

    S.-Y. Simon Wang & Robert Gillies

Authors
  1. S.-Y. Simon Wang
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  2. Jin-Ho Yoon
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  3. Emily Becker
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  4. Robert Gillies
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Correspondence to S.-Y. Simon Wang.

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Wang, SY., Yoon, JH., Becker, E. et al. California from drought to deluge. Nature Clim Change 7, 465–468 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3330

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