Study Confirms Climate Change Will Keep Driving More Intense Precipitation

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/07/1828331/when-it-rains-it-pours-new-noaa-study-confirms-climate-change-will-keep-driving-more-intense-precipitation/

By Ryan Koronowski posted from Climate Progress on Apr 7, 2013

Climate change will bring more and more extreme precipitation events this century.

A new study from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center confirms what climate scientists have long been saying about climate change’s effect on the hydrological cycle.

If you are not familiar with this term, you are certainly familiar with what it describes. As the sun warms the earth, water evaporates from oceans, lakes, and rivers, which then form clouds that produce rain and snow. More evaporation happens when the ocean and the air is warmer, which has been happening steadily for some time.

The NOAA study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, found that extreme precipitation events will become more intense this century as the globe continues to warm. Extra moisture expected from that warming will be the dominant factor fueling this increase in extreme precipitation, with a 20 to 30 percent more precipitation in the Northern Hemisphere by 2099.

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We already know that specific events cannot be said to be directly caused by climate change, but as Kevin Trenberth puts it, “All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.” And we know that NOAA’s projections have already started to become the reality: a study in Nature found that several of the last decade’s extreme weather events would not have occurred without climate change.