A major storm took hold across swaths of the central and southern United States on Wednesday unleashing extreme flooding and huge tornadoes from Arkansas up to Michigan. And conditions are expected to worsen on Friday as soils become saturated and water piles up: The National Weather Service is warning of a “life-threatening, catastrophic, and potentially historic flash flood event,” along with a risk of very large hail and more twisters. Eight people are so far confirmed dead, while 33 million are under flood watches across 11 states.
While scientists will need to do proper research to suss out exactly how much climate change is contributing to these storms, what’s known as an attribution study, they can say generally how planetary warming might worsen an event like this. It’s not necessarily that climate change created this storm — it could have happened independent of all the extra carbon that humanity has pumped into the atmosphere — but there are some clear trends making rainfall worse.
“In a world without the burning of fossil fuels, this event would happen ... Read more
