Swain's work cited in federal report that sees human-caused changes to climate
The changes to California’s climate since 1980 — higher temperatures, with more extreme swings between droughts and floods — are caused directly by human activity and will accelerate rapidly unless greenhouse gas emissions are cut sharply, according to a new federal climate report that is awaiting action by the Trump administration.
The fourth National Climate Assessment, a federal synthesis of climate science required every four years by law, says temperatures have risen rapidly since the last report was published in 2014. After setting a record that year, global temperatures shot to a new record by a wide margin in 2015, the report says, followed by another record last year.
The report, produced by 13 federal agencies and approved by the National Academy of Sciences, is unequivocal in ascribing the warming to human activity, a finding that the Trump administration and many Republicans in Congress have disputed.
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“One of the clearest signals that is summarized in this report is that California is already a warmer place than it used to be,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA whose work is cited in the report. “That’s not a future prediction anymore. It’s the reality we’re living, and the warming we’re seeing so far pales in comparison to what we’re likely to see in the future on our current carbon emissions trajectory.”
