Extreme climate change predicted till 2100: Study

Chennai was witness to such an unprecedented deluge last November-December. Extreme downpours are increasingly hitting both the wettest and driest regions of the world and global warming will raise the risks of bigger cloudbursts for the rest of the century, a study showed on Monday. 

“Extreme daily precipitation averaged over both dry and wet regimes shows robust increases” since 1950, a team of scientists led by Markus Donat of the University of New South Wales in Sydney wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Projected climate change until 2100 indicated a “continued intensification of daily precipitation extremes,” according to the study, which examined trends in the driest 30 percent of the Earth’s land area and the wettest 30 percent. Warm air can hold more moisture than cold. 

Past studies have suggested that wet areas will get wetter and dry areas drier overall with a warming trend, blamed by scientists on man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. But there have been big uncertainties about how the frequency of local extremes of rainfall may change, from tropical forests in the Amazon to deserts.

Severe rainfall is especially a threat in dry areas, the study said, because authorities have often invested little in flood defences. Among recent downpours, Death Valley in California, the hottest and driest place in North America, has had spectacular flowers this Spring.