Climate Change Identified as Contributor to Oroville Dam Spillway Incident

Case study of weather triggering the 2017 crisis points to how atmospheric rivers are impacted by global warming

A one-two punch of precipitation resulted in damage to Oroville Dam's main and emergency spillways pushing the second largest dam in California into a crisis in February 2017.

Researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and colleagues say in a new study that they have identified the fingerprint of climate change in the events that triggered the incident. Issues with the dam’s spillways led to the evacuation of 188,000 people who lived in the...

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