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30-06-2023
NEW YORK: Global heating incrementally boosts the intensity of extreme rainfall at higher altitudes, putting two billion people living in or downstream from mountains at greater risk of floods and landslides, researchers said yesterday.
Every degree Celsius of warming increases the density of major downpours by 15% at elevations above 2,000 metres, they reported in the journal Nature.
On top of that, each additional 1,000 metres of altitude adds another 1% of rainfall.
A world, in other words, 3℃ hotter than preindustrial levels will see the likelihood of potentially devastating deluges multiply by nearly half.
The findings underscore the vulnerability of infrastructure not designed to withstand extreme flooding events, the authors warned.
Earth’s surface has already warmed 1.2℃, enough to amplify record-breaking downpours that put huge swathes of Pakistan under water last summer, and parts of California earlier this year.
On current policy trends, the planet will warm 2.8℃ by century’s end, according to the UN’s IPCC climate science advisory panel.
The new study based on data covering the last 70 years, and climate-model projections found two main drivers behind the upsurge in extreme rainfall events at altitude in a warming world.
The first is simply more water: scientists have long known that every 1℃ increase boosts the amount of moisture in the atmosphere by 7%.
Since the 1950s, heavy rainfall has become more frequent and intense across most parts of the world, according to the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium, which teases out the impact of climate change on specific extreme weather events, including heatwaves, droughts and tropical storms.
Extreme rainfall is more common and intense because of human-caused climate change in Europe, most of Asia, central and eastern North America, and parts of South America, Africa and Australia, the WWA has found. (Int’l News Desk)
