Confirmed: Global floods, droughts worsening with warming

4

The intensity of extreme drought and rainfall has “sharply” increased over the past 20 years, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Water. These aren’t merely tough weather events, they are leading to extremes such as crop failure, infrastructure damage, even humanitarian crises and conflict.

The big picture on water comes from data from a pair of satellites known as GRACE, or Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, that were used to measure changes in Earth’s water storage — the sum of all the water on and in the land, including groundwater, surface water, ice, and snow.

“It’s incredible that we can now monitor the pulse of continental water from outer space,” said Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at the University of California, Los Angeles who was not involved with the study.

“I have a feeling when future generations look back and try to determine when humanity really began understanding the planet as a whole, this will be one of the studies highlighted,” he said.

The researchers say the data confirms that both frequency and intensity of rainfall and droughts are increasing due to burning fossil fuels and other human activity that releases greenhouse gases.

“I was surprised to see how well correlated the global intensity was with global mean temperatures,” said Matthew Rodell, study author and deputy director of Earth sciences for hydrosphere, biosphere, and geophysics at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

The strong link between these climate extremes and rising global average temperatures means continued global warming will mean more drought and rainstorms that are worse by many measures — more frequent, more severe, longer and larger.

Researchers looked at 1,056 events from 2002-2021 using a novel algorithm that identifies where the land is much wetter or drier than normal.

That showed the most extreme rains keep happening in sub-Saharan Africa, at least through December 2021, the end of the data. The rainfall extremes also took place in central and eastern North America from 2018-2021, and Australia during 2011-2012.

The most intense droughts were a record-breaking one in northeastern South America from 2015-2016; an event in the Cerrado region of Brazil that began in 2019 and continues; and the ongoing drought in the American Southwest that has caused dangerously low water levels in two of the biggest US reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Those remain low despite heavy rains this year.

Drought events outnumbered heavy rain events by 10 per cent. Their geographic extents and how long they lasted were similar.

A warmer atmosphere increases the rate at which water evaporates during dry periods. It also holds more water vapour, which fuels heavy rainfall events.

Advertise with the mоѕt vіѕіtеd nеwѕ ѕіtе іn Antigua!
We offer fully customizable and flexible digital marketing packages.
Contact us at [email protected]

4 COMMENTS

  1. Global floods, droughts worsening with HAARP , chemtrails and all the other manipulations that can be used to convince people about warming. It’s all part of the Agenda21-2030, Great Reset plan. It’s another hoax! Don’t let dem fool yu – Bob Marley

    There have always been climates cycles and we’re in a grand solar minimum cycle. Ice mass in Antarctica is gaining not decreasing.

    Source: antarcticjournal dot com
    Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Gains Greater Than Losses.

  2. Give me a break…more rain because the place is getting hotter? Not all scientists agree with this propaganda, it’s just the ones they allow on TV and in the journals. Please, even if global warming (now rebranded climate change) was real these global politicians have a bad habit of solving problems by creating more. Some scientists even believe we would have more food because the growing season would be longer.

    There is no climate change. The founder of the weather channel went on CNN (for the last time of course) and said this. For example, even if all the sea ice melts it CANNOT cause the sea level to rise because it’s already IN THE SEA and displacing the equivalent of it’s weight in water. That’s why they call it sea ice.

    Why does all of this matter? Because the solution to all this is you having less, fuel, freedom and food. That’s why.

Comments are closed.