Sea level rise and changing streamflows are converging with uncertain results in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta

[WB Staff]

California Delta a Flash Point for Conflict as Climate Change Unfolds

Sea level rise and changing streamflows are converging with uncertain results in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Ronald Melcer, a senior environmental scientist at the Delta Stewardship Council, explains what the future may hold.

CALIFORNIA’S SACRAMENTO-SAN JOAQUIN Delta is vital to water supplies for 25 million people and 4 million acres of farmland. It is linked to the Pacific Ocean via San Francisco Bay, which makes this water supply uniquely vulnerable to sea level rise.

Yet understanding sea level rise in the Delta is complicated. The largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas, it consists of some 70 islands and more than 1,000 miles of levees. It is also fed by California’s two largest rivers, which drain the Sierra Nevada range.

All of this complicates how sea level rise “propagates” through the Delta. It also increases the urgency of the need to understand how changing weather patterns caused by climate change will affect streamflow through the estuary.

More Info: https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/commun ... ge-unfolds

[hydro]

The most danger to stream flows in the Delta comes from the canal in the picture along with proposed tunnel system not climate change as reported .