Schools in New Delhi had to close on Monday after heavy rains He beat the capital of India. At least 15 people lost their lives in landslides and floods in the last three days. To the north, the overflowing Beas River swept areas downstream, sweeping away vehicles.
in Japan, heavy rain Floods and mudslides hit the southwest, killing two and leaving at least six missing on Monday. Local TV showed damaged houses in Fukuoka Prefecture and muddy water from the Yamakuni River threatening a bridge in Yabaki City. In Ulster County, in New York’s Hudson Valley and in VermontSome said the flooding was the worst they’d seen since Hurricane Irene in 2011, which was called the worst weather event in county history.
Despite floods in India, Japan, China And Turkey and the United States may seem distant events, atmospheric scientists have said that they have this similarity: storms are forming in the warm atmosphere, which heavy rains will be a reality at the moment. Scientists predict that the only thing to come will be more warming make it worse.
Because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, storms can produce more rain and can have deadly effects. Pollutants, especially carbon dioxide and methane, warm the atmosphere. Instead of allowing heat to escape away from the Earth into space, capture it.
While climate change is not the cause of hurricanes increasing rainfall, these storms are forming in an atmosphere that is becoming warmer and wetter.
“Sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit holds twice as much water as 50 degrees Fahrenheit,” said Rodney Wynne, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Tampa Bay. “Warm air expands and cold air contracts. You can think of it as a balloon – as it warms, it expands, so it holds more moisture.”
For every 1 degree Celsius, which is equivalent to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, the atmosphere warms, holding approximately 7% more moisture. According to NASA, the average global temperature has increased by at least 1.1 degrees Celsius (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1880.
“When a thunderstorm occurs, water vapor condenses into raindrops and falls back down. Brian Soden, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Miami, explained. Therefore, since these storms form in tropical areas that have a lot of moisture in them, the amount of rain increases.
Along Turkey’s mountainous and picturesque Black Sea coast, heavy rains have swollen rivers and damaged cities with floods and landslides. At least 15 people have been killed by floods in another mountainous area in southwest China.
“As the climate warms, we expect heavy rain events to become more common, which climate models strongly predict,” Soden added. “It’s no surprise to see these events happen, models have been predicting them since day one” _____
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