California faces arid future

Abstract

As of 30 September - the end of the 2015 'water year' - the state's water supplies are desperately low. The spring snowpack is the paltriest ever measured - by April it contained just 5% of a normal year's water - and by the end of August the major reservoirs held 59% of their historical average. Wildfires have burned through almost three times more land than they do in an average year. And there are myriad ecological impacts, including more patches of dead foliage than usual in the canopies of the state's iconic giant sequoia trees.