White House official: California drought a sign of climate change
February 14, 2014 | 06:08 AM
John Holdren
The severe droughts in California and other places are signs that climate change is real, said John Holdren, assistant to the president for science and technology, late Thursday.
Holdren, who is also director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, make the remarks in a call to reporters with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
No single weather event “can be said to be caused by climate change,” Holdren said, but weather everywhere is becoming more severe, which is a sign of the impact of climate change.
“The severe droughts are getting more frequent and drier. We understand a substantial part of why that is happening in a warming world,” he said.
More rainfall is occurring in extreme downpours, which means less is saved, Holdren noted. More of the moisture coming down over mountains is rain rather than snow and it runs off faster, he said, adding that higher temperatures also mean more loss to evaporation.
Holdren said the drought in California is the most severe that has occurred in the 100 years that records have been kept, and that it is probably the most severe in the last 500 years.
The drought in the Colorado River basin is the worst in the last 1,000 years, he added.
In response to a question about the need to build more water storage facilities in California, Holdren said “The problem in California is not that we don’t have enough reservoirs, it is that we do no have enough water in them.”
