Climate Change Fills Storms With More Rain, Analysis Shows - Instituto Ecológica

Climate Change Fills Storms With More Rain, Analysis Shows

“Climate change is in general increasing the frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall storms,” said Andreas Prein, a project scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Tropical Storm Barry, that hitted the Louisiana coast, in the USA, should become a Category 1 hurricane, bringing between 300 and 400 mm of rain to land. The average rain for New Orleans in the entire July is 150 mm.

In recent years, researchers have found that hurricanes have lingered longer, and dumped more rainfall — a sign of climate change, said Christina Patricola, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a co-author of a study that found that climate change is making tropical cyclones wetter. (Tropical cyclones include both hurricanes and tropical storms, which are hurricanes’ less speedier kin.)

According to the study, those sorts of storms are driven by warm water. Water in the gulf is 0.5 to 2 degrees Celsius warmer, according to Dr. Prein, who said: “This is really increasing the likelihood of a hurricane to form in this basin. And it will increase the intensity of the hurricane as well.”

 

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/climate/hurricane-tropical-storms.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fclimate