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Aatish Bhatia and
The United States, like most of the world, is getting both drier and wetter. Depends on where you live.
A tropical storm in New York brought record-breaking rains this weekend. Torrential downpours caused devastating flash floods in central Tennessee, destroying homes and killing more than 20 people. Still, California and much of the West remained in the most widespread drought in at least two decades, a product of long-term lack of precipitation and temperatures much warmer than normal.
This split into a wetter East and a drier West reflects a broader pattern observed in the United States in recent years. Similar patterns can be seen around the world: On average, global land areas have seen more precipitation since 1950. But while most of the world has gotten wetter, some areas have become drier.
It is not yet clear whether these changes are a permanent feature of our warming climate or reflect long-term weather variability. But these, with large regional variations, are largely consistent with forecasts from climate models that expect to see more precipitation overall as the world warms. In general: Wet places get wetter and dry places drier.
You can do read our article and see the full maps here.
Numbers: Air can hold about 7 percent more humidity for every degree Celsius or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warming.
quotation: “Precipitation is one of the key climate variables,” said Aiguo Dai, professor of atmospheric science. “The direct effects from warming temperature are significant, but the indirect effect through changes in precipitation and storm intensity will be even greater.”
How drought is crushing farmers in the West
In May, when I first started writing about the severe drought in the West, I made it a point to check out the weekly map produced by the US Drought Monitor. I saw something interesting: While I and many other journalists focused on conditions in California and the Southwest, North Dakota was also really dry.
So I went there to see what was going on. I visited ranchers in McHenry County, one of the worst affected areas, with Ben Rasmussen, a photographer. Grasslands are brown and stout. The corn grown as bait barely reached my wrists. The water holes were drying up.
All of this has forced many farmers to sell some of their herds – I and I witnessed this at a livestock auction near Bismarck, where a steady stream of farmers came in with trailers full of cattle to sell. You can do read the full article and see some great photos of Ben here.
prediction: western drought lasts in the fall or longerAccording to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
quotation: “I’ve been farming for 47 years and then it had to come this year,” said John Marshall, who runs a McHenry County ranch with his son Lane.
Climate change contributed to Europe’s deadly flood
Global warming increased the chance of torrential rain Scientists found that this caused flooding in Germany and Belgium this summer, and also made storms wetter.
The record rainfall was 1.2 to 9 times greater than it was more than a century ago, before emissions of heat-trapping gases warmed the earth by more than 1 degree Celsius, or about 2 degrees Fahrenheit, the researchers said.
Look ahead: If the Earth warms by 2 degrees Celsius, likely without severe cuts in emissions, such a weather event will become even more likely and 1.2 to 1.4 times more likely than it is now.
And Tennessee floods? Researchers didn’t have time to analyze the links between weekend flooding and climate change, but one scientist said that “heavy rain”exactly the type of event we expect to see with increasing frequency in a warming climate.”
From the view: ‘We will not let the world look away’
adults still children failing in climate change, Greta Thunberg, Adriana Calderón, Farzana Faruk Jhumu and Eric Njuguna write a guest article.
In His Own Words: Climate change is worse for women
The Times newsletter on women, gender and society spoke to Katharine K. Wilkinson, co-editor of the climate anthology “All We Can Save.” how climate change affects women and girls.
From NYT Style: Cotton diaper crisis
cotton bags pretty much everywhere these days. How did an environmental solution become part of the problem?
Also important this week:
And finally:
Milder climate changes may have shaped human journey
Until recently, most scientists believed that modern humans left Africa in a massive migration around 60,000 years ago. But the latest research using a new climate model shows that: modern humans had several windows of opportunity leaving the continent much earlier and supports the theory that Homo sapiens migrated from Africa several times.
Researchers have reconstructed the climate of northeastern Africa over the past 300,000 years and determined when there will be enough rainfall to allow hunter-gatherers to survive the journey to the Arabian Peninsula.
Among his findings: The Sinai Peninsula was traversable 246,000 years ago, and the southern strait had even more favorable windows, including the period 65,000 years ago.
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