With a third and extreme year of drought, how will future hydrologic conditions compare to current ones? There are two strands of thought suggesting a challenging future:

• the 20^th Century was an unusually wet period
• climate change will confront water managers with more severe drought conditions in the future

For the Sacramento River watershed in California, there is unexpected good news. While California must confront variability in hydrologic conditions, Department of Water Resources’ recently released tree-ring data suggesting that current severe drought conditions do not signal that California will be facing more severe hydrologic conditions in the future. Continue reading →