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The Drought Stricken State’S Climate Leaves Its’ Water

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The drought stricken State’s climate leaves its’ water supply to be volatile and unpredictable, creating a hash reality for all demanders of the scarce resource. In the worst of times California’s climate is destructive to the wellbeing of not only Californian’s quality of life, but the surrounding ecosystems. With unseasonably higher temperatures presenting issues farther into the future, in “Adapting California 's water management to climate change”, the authors Ellen Hanak and Jay Lund provide an overview of the effects California’s climate has during times of drought, and the complications it presents for the State 's water management. Water management in the state oversee a plethora of concerns; properly planning supply and delivery …show more content…

The Delta is the lifeblood of California’s water supply system, but when sea levels rise more and more of the levee system that blockades the salt and fresh water erodes, it leads to what is known as seawater intrusion. More simply, the contamination of freshwater by its salty counterpart. This process happens at varying rates, disrupting the water supply at a snail 's-pace or more in abundance, leaving a rippling effect to be felt for months, or even years. Climates’ effects on snowpack levels is far more measurable, where warming temperatures lead to higher levels of winter runoff. Thus depleting the snowpack earlier in the year, and leaving less for the spring and summer months to follow. Inversely, the average precipitations’ effects on the water supply are less measurable, due to the inability to correctly asses the amount of total runoff derived from precipitations role as the catalyst of the melting process. Measurements of this kind must be more than just an estimate, Hanak and Lund cite that “It is likely to be decades before we know if and by how much precipitation and runoff volumes are changing” (pg 20). But precipitations effects on snowpack volume must remain relevant, “the effects of reduced runoff due to decreased precipitation appear to be much more important than

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