With growing CO2 emissions and climate change, do you think this had or has an impact on California's current drought? I will give some background as to what is happening in California. Suffering from little to no rain in over a year, California went into a state wide drought. A likely variable, some scientist support is climate change. With the atmospheric conditions having low precipitation and high humidity, rain and winds headed more north. Now, natural phenomenon or rapid human pollution? Whats your thoughts on the situation...
  [The-california-drought-in-one-photo](//res.cloudinary.com/moot/image/upload/t_d3-gallery-s3/v1412791310/:footprint:4nkA:thecaliforniadroughtinonephoto.jpg.jpg)

good one victorian!

Yes I think it does have an impact and the impact is certainly bad. Over the summer i went to the colorado river and saw how much the water level has lowered. I dont know exactly but it looked like it was lowered about 50 yards. The drought is a huge problem and I think the government is severly overlooking it. Right now there is supposed be non stop rain (noreaster) but instead its about 95 degrees outside.

The California drought is definitely a serious problem. This past weekend, I went on a hike in Orinda, and saw the water levels of the San Leandro watershed had lowered significantly. A potential cause of this drought is the high amount of pressure in the atmosphere above California and the pacific ocean. This article (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/sept … 92914.html) says that the pressure is more likely to be created when there is more green house gases in the atmosphere, linking the drought CO2 emissions released by humans.

I have heard from a few sources that this year may be an El Niño year, which would bring more rain to California than usual. This New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/scien … .html?_r=0) says that it may be a weak one.

What a great topic to bring up with climate change. I believe that CO2 has a big part in the California drought. CO2 traps heat, and because of the majority of heat is high in the atmosphere, precipitation can not form without that heat. And no precipitation, no rain. According to Geophysical Research Letters, if we shortened carbon dioxide concentrations, we can prevent droughts caused by global warming in less than a year. With California being such a big state, the overall footprints are large volumes of CO2. If California did something simple enough by cutting CO2 concentrations, then hopefully the chance of rain could increase and the drought would be over.

I definitely agree that global warming is a major factor of the drought in California. The CO2 emissions being released into the atmosphere are higher than before and are trapping all the heat inside, preventing precipitating clouds to form. This is happening in some regions more than others, but overall California is getting little to no rain.

Later in the year, there is suppose to be an El Niño in California. El Niño is a natural phenomena caused by warm ocean temperatures, not relating to CO2 emissions, which create a much rainier climate and increase Earth's surface temperature. This is great news because it will definitely help out with the California drought even though the El Niño will be weaker than usual. Although the El Niño will warm Earth's surface temperature, CO2 still contributes greatly to Earth's warming temperature, perhaps even more so than the El Niño.

The El Niño will definitely help out with the drought this year, but they only occur every two to seven years and sometimes aren't very strong. Humans should do their part and not have to rely on the  El Niño to fix their scarcity of water. Since California doesn't get a lot of rain anyway, people need to start to cut their CO2 emissions to avoid droughts as much as possible.