Climate Change: Ocean Warming Causes Stronger Rainfall Extremes

Warmer oceans may cause harder rainfall. Scientists have found that as temperatures rise on our planet, there may be more precipitation extremes in our future.

As greenhouse gases continue to warm our atmosphere, the seas also warm. In fact, the Black Sea and eastern Mediterranean have both warmed by about 2 degrees Celsius since the 1980s. This, in particular, may have an impact on the weather.

The world's oceans help govern the conditions on our planet. Circulating water causes winds to blow and also influences certain weather patterns. That's why scientist decided to take a closer look to see how precipitation might be impacted.

"Our showcase example was a heavy precipitation event from July 2012 that took place in Krymsk (Russia), near the Black Sea coast, resulting in a catastrophic flash flood with 172 deaths," said Edmund Meredith, lead author of the new study, in a news release. "We carried out a number of very-high-resolution simulations with an atmospheric model to investigate the impact of rising sea surface temperatures on the formation of intense convective storms, which are often associated with extreme rainfall."

The simulations of the event with observed sea surface temperatures revealed that there was an increase in precipitation intensity of over 300 percent compared to comparable simulations using sea surface temperatures representative of the early 1980s.

"Due to ocean warming, the lower atmosphere has become more unstable over the Black Sea and eastern Mediterranean," said Meredith. "We therefore expect that events like those in Krymsk or Sochi will become more frequent in the future."

The findings are published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

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