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Lake Corcoran- 750,000 years ago the California central valley was the bottom of the largest lake west of the Great Lakes. The mighty glaciers and rivers of the Sierras kept the lake full. Evaporation from the lake surface was never great enough that the rain and snowfall of California could not keep the lake full. The ancient lake surface evaporation is credited with providing moisture that maintained the Sierra glaciers well past the end of the last ice age and created the Nevada Pleistocene lakes of the Mojave region-Lake Owens and others -now dry. It took a lot of snowfall to create the icy glaciers that carved Yosemite. So California was not always so dry.

 Starting about 600,000 years ago the giant lake started slowly draining away as plate tectonics pushed the Pacific plate mountains north allowing new and increased drainage to the sea through the Carquinez Strait and San Francisco Bay. 

The lake left its’ mark with a soil horizon profile of 200 feet of muds and clay leaving the California central valley as one of the worlds richest agricultural production regions. Tulare and Kern lakes were modern remnants of the ancient lake leftover as California was exiting another long term drought cycle. Much like ice ages, these dry cycles are not well understood. The modern lakes were the center of many Native California cultures until drained by European settlers in the 1800s.

  Concurrent with the start of drainage of Tulare Lake was the timber felling and extraction along the banks of the Amazon river system. These ancient trees were readily exploited as the river provided the immediate transport of the giant mahogany logs. These two events, draining wetlands worldwide and the general destruction of forests around the world, started the current descent into long term and possibly permanent drought for California and the American west. Without equatorial rainforests and forests everywhere, world drought is inevitable.

 

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This very wet 2022-2023 water year gives an example of what created lake Corcoran-if continued on an annual basis. The IPCC conclusion that the warming air temperatures can hold 7 % more water than in the recent past means increased rainfall world wide, an opinion with which I don't agree with. Not that the atmosphere can't hold more moisture, but it can't because the rising air temperature blocks the pathway to increased moisture in the atmosphere. The marine layer inversion  increase results in less moisture laden air rising to condensation over the worlds oceans. Oceans surface temperatures lag the rise in air temperatures making the moisture laden air at the oceans surface incapable of rising. The surface air is cooler than the warm air above and less buoyant.

Of course this year's abundant rainfall is because the Pacific high moved dramatically south and allowed the west to east movement of storms directly into California. That is weather-not climate. The question remains-why does the Pacific high move north resulting in drought and sometimes south resulting in very wet years?

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