New research from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientists finds that atmospheric rivers will increase rainfall on the West Coast due to climate change.
The study, published in the journal Climate Dynamics, found that atmospheric rivers explain the majority of atypical El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) years.
El Niño and La Niña are climate phenomena associated with wetter and drier winter conditions. During 2023’s La Niña, California experienced a series of nine atmospheric rivers, making it the state’s 10th wettest year on record.
Atmospheric rivers are part of California’s water supply, with an average of up to 65% of the annual precipitation in Northern California and 40% in Southern California.
“Atmospheric rivers are the precipitation wildcards in the Western U.S.,” said Rosa Luna-Nino, a postdoctoral scholar at Scripps and lead author of the study. “One or two atmospheric rivers can turn it into a wet year, but a weak atmospheric river season can turn it into a dry year. This means we can’t trust El Niño and La Niña completely to make accurate water year predictions.”
Scripps scientists at the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes are working to improve atmospheric river forecasts because the seasonal frequency is almost impossible to predict.
“We need to keep improving our ability to predict atmospheric river landfills, and the better we get at that, the more we can use that information to help us interpret the seasonal forecast and vice versa,” said Alexander Gershunov, a climate scientist at Scripps and co-author of the study.
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