Rainfall gets more severe as climate heats up
Saturday November 21 2009
The record rainfall that caused yesterday's devastating floods cannot be blamed directly on climate change, experts said.
But they warned we were likely to see more extreme weather of this kind in the coming years as a result of global warming.
Climate change models suggest that the proportion of intense rainfall will increase as warmer air from rising temperatures means the atmosphere can carry more moisture.
Roger Street, Oxford-based technical director of the UK Climate Impacts Programme, said downpours would become no more frequent in the future, but added: "When it rains, it will rain more heavily."
Data points to drier summers and wetter winters, although Mr Street stressed that there would continue to be exceptions.
"The climate has always been variable but there is a higher risk that when precipitation falls, it will be more extreme."
Professor Stuart Lane, executive director of Durham University's Institute of Hazard and Risk Research, said "These are unusual events in many senses, but it is particularly important that we don't see them as exceptional or that we simply assume climate change is responsible.
"Historically, evidence identifies years to decades when we have many major flood events and years to decades when we don't.
Irish Independent
