SOURCE: Washington Post, Nature
DATE: December 5, 2016
SNIP: U.S. residents may want to start preparing for a stormier future, scientists say. According to a new study, future climate change could cause an increase in extreme precipitation events throughout much of the country — in fact, these events could become up to five times more frequent in some areas.
It’s an outcome many climate scientists have already predicted for the planet as a whole, according to Andreas Prein, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the new study’s lead author.
“We expect that intense rainfall extremes will get more frequent and more intense in the future climate because if we warm up the atmosphere, air can hold more moisture,” he said. In fact, he added, records from the past few decades indicate that we’re already seeing this effect in the warming United States.