Major role of climate in supercharging rain!
Floods have been tearing a path of destruction across the globe, hammering Kenya, submerging Dubai, and forcing hundreds of thousands of people from Russia to China, Brazil and Somalia from their homes.
Though not all directly attributed to global warming, they are occurring in a year of record-breaking temperatures and underscore what scientists have long warned — that climate change drives more extreme weather. Climate change isn’t just about rising temperatures but the knock-on effect of all that extra heat being trapped in the atmosphere and seas.
April was the 11th consecutive month to break its own heat record, the EU climate monitor
Copernicus said on Wednesday, while ocean temperatures have been off the charts for even longer. “The recent extreme precipitation events are consistent with what is expected in an increasingly warmer climate,” Sonia Seneviratne, an expert on the Un-mandated IPCC scientific panel, said.
Warmer oceans mean greater evaporation, and warmer air can hold more water vapour.
Scientists even have a calculation for this: for every one degree Celsius in temperature rise, the atmosphere can hold seven per cent more moisture.
“This results in more intense rainfall events,” Davide Faranda, an expert on extreme weather at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), said.
In April, Pakistan recorded double the amount of normal monthly rainfall — one province saw 437 per cent more than average — while the UAE received about two years worth of rain in a single day.