Climate Change: Record-Breaking Heavy Rain and Floods Caused by Rising Temperatures

As climate change continues, we may be in for some heavier rain. Heavy rainfall events have been increasing strikingly in the past 30 years and now, scientists have taken a closer look at what might cause these events.

In this case, the researchers made an advanced statistical analysis of rainfall data from the years 1901 to 2010. They looked at thousands of weather stations across the globe to collect their data. In the end, the scientists found that over 1980 to 2010, there were 12 percent more heavy rainfall events than expected in a stationary climate.

"Due to the upward trend, the worldwide increase of record-breaking daily rainfall events in the very last year of the studied period reaches even 26 percent," said Jascha Lehmann, one of the researchers, in a news release.

The record-breaking anomaly has distinct patterns across Earth's continents with generally wet regions seeing an over-proportional increase and drier regions less so. For example, in South East Asian countries, the amount of increase was as high as 56 percent. In Europe, it was 31 percent and in the central U.S., it was 24 percent.

"One out of ten record-breaking rainfall events observed globally in the past thirty years can only be explained if the long-term warming is taken into account," said Dim Coumou, co-author of the new study. "For the last year studied, 2010, it is even one event out of four, as the trend is upward."

The researchers found that rainfall measurements are increasing when it comes to extreme rainfall events.

"The pronounced recent increase in record-breaking rainfall events is of course worrying," said Coumou. "Yet since it is consistent with human-caused global warming, it can also be curbed if greenhouse gas emission from fossil fuels are substantially reduced."

The findings are published in the journal Climatic Change.

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