In California’s 2022-2023 winter season, the state faced nine atmospheric rivers (ARs) that led to extreme flooding, landslides, and power outages—the longest duration of continuous AR conditions in the past 70 years. Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) recently conducted a study using machine learning to understand these complex weather systems better, finding that more intense atmospheric rivers are more likely to occur in succession within a short period of time.
In California’s 2022-2023 winter season, the state faced nine atmospheric rivers (ARs) that led to extreme flooding, landslides, and power outages—the longest duration of continuous AR conditions in the past 70 years. Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) recently conducted a study using machine learning to understand these complex weather systems better, finding that more intense atmospheric rivers are more likely to occur in succession within a short period of time.
A paper published in Communications Earth and Environment details their findings.
California’s winter climate is largely defined by these atmospheric rivers—long, narrow regions in the atmosphere that transfer water vapor from the tropics, most commonly associated with the West Coast coming from the Pacific Ocean.
