The US state of California warned of a storm, the consequences of which would be more serious than earthquakes and forest fires traditional for the US West Coast, reports ABC News.
According to scientists, the state can fall from three to six meters of precipitation, as a result, each of the largest cities in California will be under a five-meter layer of water. Seismologist Lucy Jones noted that such a “mega-catastrophe” had already happened in the winter of 1861-1862. It was marked by a record number of victims and destruction.
Climatologist Daniel Swain believes that the tragedy could repeat itself. In this case, it is worth expecting a significant number of victims, and at least one and a half million residents of California will be forced to evacuate.
Jones and Swain emphasized that a megastorm is inevitable. From the tree rings of trees, they found that over the past 1800 years, the state had to survive at least six floods, which in scale exceeded the natural disasters of 1861-1862.
Earlier, the World Meteorological Organization declared that 2020 was one of the most hottest in the entire history of observations. The average temperature on Earth has reached 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and is expected to temporarily exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2024. According to the UN head, the world is “on the brink of a climate catastrophe”.