‘Getting Heavier': Climate Change Primes Storms to Drop More Rain
The severe storm system that has inundated the central and southeastern United States with heavy rain and high winds for days fits into a broader pattern in recent decades of increasing rainfall across the eastern half of the United States.
Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for 1991 through 2020 show that the Eastern part of the country received more rain, on average, over those years than it did during the 20th century. At the same time, precipitation decreased across the West.
The sharp east-west divide is consistent with predictions from climate scientists, who expect wet places to get wetter, and dry areas to get drier, as the world warms.
While no individual storm can be tied to climate change without further analysis, warming air can result in heavier rainfall. That's because warm air has the ability to hold more moisture than cooler air, fueling conditions for more average precipitation overall, and the potential for storms that come through to be more intense.
Global temperatures have been increasing year after year, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, which pumps planet-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The past 10 years have been the 10 hottest in nearly 200 years of record-keeping, according to a recent report from the World Meteorological Organization.
'When we have these very heavy rain events, the trends have been pointing toward those heavy events getting heavier,' said Deanna Hence, an associate professor of climate meteorology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Hourly Precip.
Sources: NOAA (rainfall); MapLibre (map rendering); Natural Earth (roads and labels); Protomaps (map tiles)
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By William B. Davis and Joey K. Lee
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