Climate change’s fingerprints are on US upper Midwest floods, says scientists
UNITED STATES: Climate change played a hand in the deadly floods in the US upper Midwest that have damaged crops and drowned livestock, scientists said, while a Trump administration official said more homework was needed before making that link.
The ‘bomb cyclone’ that dumped rain on Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri and killed at least four people now threatens a wider region downstream of swollen rivers and smashed levees.
Manmade greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the oceans and making the air above them more humid, scientists said. When a storm picks up and eventually spits out that moisture, it can be devastating for people caught below.
“The atmosphere is pretty close to fully saturated, it’s got all the water it can take,” said Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Big storms like the bomb cyclone and Hurricane Harvey, which smacked Houston in 2017 with record downpours, are where the impact of climate change can most clearly be seen, he said, adding that climate change’s fingerprints were all over the recent storm.
“I don’t think it’s a starring role, but it’s a strong supporting role,” said Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research, a federally-funded office, of climate change’s role in the Midwest floods.
He said the bomb cyclone was carrying vast amounts of moisture from the Pacific up to 1,500 miles away.
Wehner said the flooding was consistent with projections in a government report issued last November, the National Climate Assessment Volume II, that said climate change would boost costs in industries from farming to fisheries and energy production by increasing the frequency of powerful storms.
That report, mandated by Congress, was compiled by 13 federal departments and agencies, but was called inaccurate by the White House.