![]() ![]() Because warmer air can hold more moisture, atmospheric rivers can carry bigger cargoes of precipitation. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.īut in a state where scarcity of water has long been the central fact of existence, global warming is not only worsening droughts and wildfires. This will cool its payload of vapor and kick off weeks and waves of rain and snow. When this torpedo of moisture reaches California, it will crash into the mountains and be forced upward. It will be carrying so much water that if you converted it all to liquid, its flow would be about 26 times what the Mississippi River discharges into the Gulf of Mexico at any given moment. This vapor plume will be enormous, hundreds of miles wide and more than 1,200 miles long, and seething with ferocious winds. No one knows exactly when, but from the vast expanse of tropical air around the Equator, atmospheric currents will pluck out a long tendril of water vapor and funnel it toward the West Coast. California, where earthquakes, droughts and wildfires have shaped life for generations, also faces the growing threat of another kind of calamity, one whose fury would be felt across the entire state.Īccording to new research, it will very likely take shape one winter in the Pacific, near Hawaii. ![]()
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