Daniel Swain in San Francisco Chronicle: Bigger, badder storms coming in years ahead, and California is right in their path

California’s wild weather swings, from pounding rain to drought and from fires to floods, are widely expected to worsen as the climate warms. A new study shows just how severe things might get, and it’s not pretty.

“We really wanted to get at the specifics,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist who has long studied California’s big storms and is one of three UCLA researchers who authored the new paper. “It’s one thing to say that an atmospheric river will have more moisture. It’s another thing to connect them to the clouds and say this is how much moisture will drop.”