Warmer world could bring more thunderstorms: study

WASHINGTON — Summer thunderstorms in North America will likely be larger, wetter and more frequent in a warmer world, dumping 80 per cent more rain in some areas and worsening flooding, a new study says.

Future storms will also be wilder, soaking entire cities and huge portions of states, according to a study released last week in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The U.S. in recent years has experienced prolonged drenchings that have doused Nashville in 2010, West Virginia and Louisiana in 2016 and Houston this year. The disasters cost about $20 billion a year in damage.

By the end of the century, if emissions aren’t curbed, these gully washers will be much worse because they will get bigger, said Andreas Prein, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, who led the study.

Prein and colleagues used computer simulations to see how global warming might change the large thunderstorms that are already daily summer events in North America. Previous studies projected more frequent and wetter storms, but this is the first to show they likely will be more widespread, covering an entire city instead of just half of it, Prein said.

“We see increases that are beyond our expectations ... far beyond our expectations,” Prein said.

With the size of the storm factored in, the total amount of rain in the U.S. South is projected to jump 80 per cent between now and the end of the century, Prein said. Canada and the rest of the U.S. should expect a 40 per cent rain increase from current levels.