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New York Times
03-05-2025
- Climate
- New York Times
One of the Weather World's Biggest Buzzwords Expands Its Reach
For people on the West Coast, atmospheric rivers, a weather phenomenon that can bring heavy rain or snow from San Diego to Vancouver, are as common a feature of winter as Nor'easters are in Boston. Like those East Coast storms, 'atmospheric river' can feel like a buzzword — more attention grabbing than just 'heavy rain,' even if that is how most people walking down the streets of San Francisco will experience it. But it is also a specific meteorological phenomenon that describes the moisture-rich storms that develop over the Pacific Ocean and dump precipitation when they collide with the mountain ranges of Washington, Oregon and California. These plumes of exceptionally wet air transported through the atmosphere by strong winds are not unique to the West Coast, though. They occur around the world, and a growing number of meteorologists and scientists are beginning to apply the term to storms east of the Rocky Mountains. When days of heavy rain caused deadly flooding in the central and southern United States this spring, AccuWeather pinned the unusual weather on an 'atmospheric river.' So did CNN. While some researchers hope to see the term become more widely adopted, not all meteorologists are doing this, including those at the National Weather Service. At the center of the debate is a struggle over how forecasters describe the day's weather. Eastern atmospheric river Western atmospheric river April 5 March 30 Atmospheric rivers in the Pacific flow toward the West Coast, where they encounter mountain ranges. Warm moist air comes up from Central America, the Caribbean and the Gulf. Western atmospheric river March 30 Atmospheric rivers in the Pacific flow toward the West Coast, where they encounter mountain ranges. Eastern atmospheric river April 5 Warm moist air comes up from Central America, the Caribbean and the Gulf. Western atmospheric river March 30 Atmospheric rivers in the Pacific flow toward the West Coast, where they encounter mountain ranges. Eastern atmospheric river April 5 Warm moist air comes up from Central America, the Caribbean and the Gulf. Note: The animation shows data from the GOES-16/18 satellites, which uses an infrared wavelength that detects water vapor in the upper troposphere. All times are UTC. Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration By William B. Davis Atmospheric rivers can stretch up to 2,000 miles. They form over oceans generally in the tropics and subtropics, where water evaporates and collects into giant airborne rivers of vapor that move through the lower atmosphere toward the North and South Poles. They're distinctly narrow, on average measuring 500 miles wide and stretching 1,000 miles. Many weaker atmospheric rivers bring beneficial rain and snow, but stronger ones can deliver heavy rainfall that causes flooding, mudslides and catastrophic damage. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
08-04-2025
- Climate
- New York Times
‘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) Note: By William B. Davis and Joey K. Lee Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
