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Climate Change Contributed to Oroville Spillway Collapse, Study Says

A study led by UCLA IoES Center for Climate Science postdoc Xingying Huang finds that climate change has already contributed to greater wintertime runoff in the Sierra Nevada, and that flood risk climbs in the future. "Our big dams were designed to capture smaller floods than what we expect in the future," said colleague Daniel Swain in Weather Channel. "...these structures were built for a climate that we no longer have."

climate change contributed to oroville spillway collapse, study says

Zooming in on how climate change affects severe weather

UCLA weather expert Daniel Swain is part of a team that created a new four-step “framework” to more accurately test how climate change is pushing unprecedented weather events. It’s the latest study in a burgeoning field of climate science known as “extreme event attribution.” Testing their new framework, researchers found that human induced warming has increased the odds of severely hot weather across more than 80 percent of the globe.

zooming in on how climate change affects severe weather

Oroville Dam crisis could be sign of things to come

The recent crisis at Oroville Dam sheds light on an emerging problem for California's aging water resources infrastructure. Professor Alex Hall's research shows that, as temperatures warm in the Sierra Nevada, climate change could precipitate a deluge that will overwhelm a patchwork network of dams and reservoirs that supply 60 percent of the state's water.

oroville dam crisis could be sign of things to come