Heavy rainfall events setting ever new records have been increasing strikingly in the past thirty years. While before 1980, multi-decadal fluctuations in extreme rainfall events are explained by natural variability, a team of scientists detected a clear upward trend in the past few decades towards more unprecedented daily rainfall events.
They find the worldwide increase to be consistent with rising global temperatures which are caused by greenhouse-gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Short-term torrential rains can lead to high-impact floodings.
Extreme rainfall in Pakistan 2010 caused devastating flooding which killed hundreds and lead to a cholera outbreak. Other examples of record-breaking precipitation events in the period studied include rainstorms in Texas in the US, 2010, which caused dozens of flash-floods. And no less than three so-called 'once-in-a-century' flooding events in Germany all happened in just a couple of years, starting 1997. "In all of these places, the amount of rain pouring down in one day broke local records -- and while each of these individual events has been caused by a number of different factors, we find a clear overall upward trend for these unprecedented hazards," says lead-author Jascha Lehmann.
The average increase is 12 percent globally -- but 56 percent in South East Asia
Heavy rainfall saves me money on car washes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @01:30AM
CO2 is more like a gazillion tiny mirrors that reflect energy in random directions. This acts like a grease to both spread it around the atmosphere more evenly and more quickly return to equilibrium upon any perterbation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @11:53AM
Blanket is a pretty good analogy for laymen. The whole mirror thing requires some brain cells to understand, while comparing it to blankets allows you to sum it all up in a snappy one-liner, which is what's required to convince more than half of the population, the kind of suckers who see a snowball held up on TV or see it snowing outside and believe its proof that global warming isn't real, the kind of people who never use logic or any kind of thought process and let emotional one-liner soundbites guide them into all their important decisions, especially the ones in the voting booth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @05:04PM
Reminds me of 2 stupid dogs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1YY54RI5YY [youtube.com]