UCLA’s Daniel Swain explains how atmospheric rivers are the cause of Northern California’s record rainfall
March 1, 2019Northern California received heavy rain during the first week of March creating an “atmospheric river,” where water in the tropical Pacific evaporated from the warm ocean surface and was forced upward into colder air, the vapor staying put like a river in the sky until it hit a coast – in this case the West Coast of the U.S. UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain (climate scientist within UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability) explained the phenomena in a National Geographic article, commenting that we can expect this effect to intensify in the future due to climate change.
Read the full article at National Geographic.