How climate change intensifies the water cycle, fueling extreme rainfall and flooding – the Northeast deluge was just the latest

Mathew Barlow in The Conversation:

A powerful storm system that hit the U.S. Northeast on July 9 and 10, 2023, dumped close to 10 inches of rain on New York’s Lower Hudson Valley in less than a day and sent mountain rivers spilling over their banks and into towns across Vermont, causing widespread flash flooding. Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said he hadn’t seen rainfall like it since Hurricane Irene devastated the region in 2011.

Extreme water disasters like this have disrupted lives in countries around the world in the past few years, from the Alps and Western Europe to PakistanIndia and Australia, along with several U.S. states in 2022 and 2023.

The role of climate change is becoming increasingly evident in these types of deluges.

Studies by scientists around the world show that the water cycle has been intensifying and will continue to intensify as the planet warms. An international climate assessment I co-authored in 2021 for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reviewed the research and laid out the details.

More here.