In other areas, hydropower production is expected to decline along with the snowpack, while statewide electricity use could shoot up 55 percent by the end of the century and ozone pollution will increase, the report said.

By the final decades of the century, acreage burned across much of the state's northern forests could easily double and under some scenarios quadruple, said Anthony Westerling, an assistant professor of geography and environmental engineering at University of California in Merced.

The reason is simple: As the temperature rises, the fire season lengthens and woodlands get drier, burning more readily, he said.

Richard Howitt, an agricultural economics professor at the University of California in Davis, estimates that the Central Valley's farm acreage will shrink by roughly 1.5 million acres, or20 percent, by 2050.

The state's Sierra Nevada snowpack, which stores water and then slowly releases it to the river systems that feed the state's major reservoirs, will shrink by at least a quarter over the next four decades, previous studies have concluded.

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Editor:Yang Jie