Those hysterical climate-changer deniers at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say the California drought is primarily caused by natural variability not global warming. This didn’t stop other scientists from saying the natural variability is due to climate change. Maybe not. California experienced a 240 year drought starting in the year 850, and that was long before climate change was an issue. So clearly, there has always been huge variability in California weather. Which is all the more reason for California to implement toilet-to-tap everywhere and to conserve and reuse water whenever possible.
A new report, based on seven models that ran 160 “reenactments” of the last three years, concludes that “perhaps about two-thirds of the precipitation deficits” of the last three years have been the product of various convergent factors, including “a randomness of the atmosphere,” says Marty Hoerling, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory and one of the study’s co-authors.