In just a few decades, summers in California will not only be much hotter, but will also stretch for months longer. Floods will become more widespread and extreme. Exposure to wildfire smoke will kill thousands more people every year. Those are the dire projections of California’s Fifth Climate Change Assessment, a report produced by California every few years that analyzes the impacts of changing weather patterns on the nation’s most-populous state. The future laid out in the report, which was published on Monday, touches on familiar warnings: more wildfires, bigger storms, longer droughts. … At the same time, water shortages could mean that the number of acres that farmers irrigate could decline dramatically, including by up to 40 percent in the San Joaquin Valley, a major agricultural hub.

Other climate change news:

• CBS Los Angeles: California’s latest Climate Change Assessment looks at what rising temperatures could mean for SoCal
• Davis Vanguard (Calif.): California Climate Assessment warns of extreme heat, water shortages and widening inequality by 2050
• Humboldt NOW (Calif.): New report explores how climate change is shaping the North Coast’s future
• The Equation (Union of Concerned Scientists): Blog: How will California be shaped by climate change? The Fifth Assessment provides some clues
• UC Santa Cruz: Blog: Central Coast will face more extremes, regional report of California’s Fifth Climate Assessment finds
• Big Pivots: Blog: Last winter’s snow drought and the thick fingerprints of climate change