Climate Change Will Only Bring More Devastating Storms like January’s

After a brutal series of atmospheric rivers drenched our state with deadly consequences, the skies have finally cleared. But the mess left in their wake is on full display. Rocks have littered the roadways, trees are still down, debris clutters the sidewalks and the risk of another heavy rainfall hangs over us. For residents of the foothills, the recent storms evoked dreadful memories of mudslides past, the kind that can take out a backyard or home with little to no warning.

Tragically, those mudslides and other disasters were a reality for many residents in other parts of the state. In the central and northern parts of California, storms downed power lines, washed away piers, trapped people in their cars and homes and forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate. At least 20 people died. So far, the estimated damage costs are in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The reports and images we were getting from on the ground in our communities were terrifying, and I spent hours calling California mayors, county supervisors and emergency responders, asking what they needed and passing those requests along to various federal officials. What quickly became clear was just how much more was needed – more resources, more coordination and more programs set up to help with the inevitable recovery.

President Biden initially granted California a state of emergency declaration but we knew that wouldn’t be enough. So Senator Padilla, Rep. Jimmy Panetta and I led a California delegation request for an expedited major disaster declaration to free up even more federal resources. The request was bipartisan – and showed how our two parties can, and must, work together when people’s lives are at risk.

That kind of cooperation is now more important than ever. Because while climate scientists are still studying the factors that caused these most recent storms, they have been ringing the warning bells for years: rising temperatures around the globe will cause even more drastic swings between California’s droughts and rains, and these storms will only become more frequent, more intense and more damaging.

In the immediate future, we need to do what we can to improve our resilience to climate change and new megastorms – including upgrading our flood infrastructure across the state. Congress’s bipartisan infrastructure bill granted more than $8 billion to improve western water infrastructure writ large, but we need to invest even more in fortifying levees and restoring floodplains.

These investments can and should go hand-in-hand with our efforts to improve our resilience to drought, which climate change is also exacerbating. By restoring floodplains, we can naturally divert more excess water into replenishing our lagging groundwater supply. And we also must invest in more stormwater recapture so we can reuse heavy rains for urban and agricultural use.

At the end of the day, though, the most important thing we can do is reduce carbon emissions and slow the pace of global warming. This is the single-biggest factor contributing to our rapidly changing climate and unless we continue investing in green technologies these devastating storms will become a permanent reality of life in California. A new study by climate scientists at our national labs shows that at our current pace, atmospheric rivers like those of the past month could grow more than 30% by 2050 – or more than 100 trillion gallons.

If we take action now and make even more historic federal investments in fighting climate change like we did last summer we will lessen the potential for future devastation and undoubtedly save lives. It will require all of us – at the local, state and federal levels, and members of all political parties – to work together. With so much on the line for our planet and our families, we must rise to the challenge.