Last updated October 17, 2021
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Oroville Dam Spillway Overflow February 2017

United States

A series of weather systems has delivered record-breaking heavy precipitation to California since early January 2017. On top of heavy precipitation, warm weather systems dropped rainfall in mountain regions where snow pack was forced to melt back to higher elevations and the resulting melt water joined the mountain run-off from the passing storms.

Climate change contributes to both heavy precipitation as well as warmer temperatures that prematurely melt snow pack. The combination of heavy precipitation and snow-pack melt has driven the state from drought to flood. Natural climate variability in California is extremely high. Both drought and flood are part of the natural climate pattern. And climate change contributes to both. As California swings between drought and flood climate change helps push the pendulum out to either extreme, furthering weather whiplash.

An attribution study reports that runoff in the watershed supplying the Oroville dam during the peak precipitation immediately prior to the dam failure was one-third greater than it otherwise would have been were it not for global warming.[1]

Infrastructure, such as the Oroville Dam, is designed to withstand the extreme weather seen in the historical record. As extreme weather becomes more severe than weather of the past, thresholds can be crossed and infrastructure is threatened with collapse.

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Oroville Dam Spillway Overflow
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Global Warming
Land Surface Temperature Increase
Air Mass Temperature Increase
Large Scale Global Circulation Change
Snowpack Melting Earlier and/or Faster
Precipitation Falls as Rain Instead of Snow
Atmospheric River Change
Snowpack Decline
Oroville Dam Spillway Overflow February 2017