El Nino to finally bring flooding rain to California? (And drought in Syria)

El Nino’s Long-Awaited Grand Performance Is On Its Way to California
 | Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog

Could be very wet in California in the next couple of weeks.

In other climate related news, a study suggest the Syrian drought (which may have contributed somewhat to the current disastrous war) is the worst one for 900 years, and could indicate more to come:

War has been the direct driver of the refugee flux and behind that is  a complex mix of social and political factors both inside and outside the region. One fiercely studied and debated driver has been a recent dip into a series of severe droughts starting in the late 1990s.


Previous work has prescribed some of the drought — and its impact on the socioeconomic fabric in the Middle East — to climate change. New findings published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres put it in even starker context, showing that the drought is likely the worst to affect the region in 900 years. The Mediterranean as a whole has been subject to widespread drought at various points in the past 20 years. Climate models project that the region is likely to get drier in the future, which Ben Cook, a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said drove the new line of inquiry.

“These recent drought events have motivated a lot of concern that this could be an indication of climate change, with the eastern Mediterranean and Syrian droughts being the most obvious,” Cook said....The projections for the region show a continued drying trend throughout
the coming century as climate change contributes to a shift in circulation patterns. That means what’s happening there now could just be the start of more prolonged, more severe drought. In a region already wracked by water scarcity and conflict, more drying could ratchet up
tension even further.

I take it that the economists' models for future effect of climate change on global GDP have trouble factoring that one in?