Are Atmospheric Rivers the New Normal?

Due to mild temperatures and consistent weather, storms are very infrequent in the Bay Area. Over the past few weeks, however, storms and heavy downpours have appeared in California, impacting the School’s community members and campus.

On October 24, an atmospheric river (a powerful storm) filled California with heavy rainfall. After this storm, there is one main question to be answered: Will these storms become more common?

As data flows in, people are hypothesizing on how recurrent these storms will come to be. Eugene Vann, an Upper School Biology and AP Environmental Science teacher, explains his thoughts on the matter.

“I know that 50% of all of the precipitation that falls on the state comes from events like this, so I think these are a yearly occurrence. There might be some hypothesis that they are going to become more common with climate change.”

Global warming, a part of climate change, is the event of the earth heating up due to carbon emissions from fossil fuels and other greenhouse gases.

As an explanation, Vann says, “I do know that one of the factors that plays into these atmospheric rivers is warm water storms in the Pacific, and so it seems like a reasonable hypothesis that if climate change is happening, we might have more of those warm weather storms and possibly more of these events.”

Climate change is a very possible cause of these atmospheric rivers, and Oakland could see more of them in the future.