Experts have concluded that the drought currently experienced in California is not induced by climate change. They argued that there is just too much demand that the water sources couldn't supply.
A team of scientists evaluated the California drought and concluded that climate change has no role in it. According to them, possible causes of the drought are the lack of precipitation in the area and the increased demand for water.
Historically speaking, droughts with the same intensity as the current one was observed in 1976 and 1977. These droughts affected California because there were no storms coming from the Pacific for those years. Since the drought has been observed before, scientists attributed its origin to the lack of precipitation rather than warmer temperatures caused by climate change.
Another reason for the drought is the increased demand for water by California residents. Researchers noted that the demand for water for household and agricultural use has increased over the years, but the water supply remained the same. This trend, according to experts, reduced the state's resiliency in coping with the drought.
Similarly, the 2012 report made by the Intergovernmental Panel in Climate Change (IPCC) focused on the effects of climate change on soil moisture for regions in North America.
"No overall or slight decrease in dryness since 1950; large variability; large drought of the 1930s dominates," the New York Times quoted the report.
Forty-two scientists who worked with the evaluation stated that they have "medium confidence" that their conclusions are correct. They also studied trend of drought in North America and how it will change for the next years.
A 2013 assessment by the IPCC confirmed the findings that the drought is not due to climate change.
The New York Times quoted the report: "Recent long-term droughts in western North America cannot definitively be shown to lie outside the very large envelope of natural precipitation variability in this region, particularly given new evidence of the history of high-magnitude natural drought and pluvial episodes suggested by paleoclimatic reconstructions."
