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In the past 48 hours, parts of Tennessee have been swept by record-breaking rainfall and unexpected flash flooding. killed at least 21 people and left dozens missing.
“This is the kind of event we expect to see with increasing frequency in a warming climate,” said Gary Lackmann, professor of atmospheric science at North Carolina State University.
NS Tennessee disaster It comes just weeks after the extraordinary floods that hit Germany, flooding the streets and causing massive destruction. Then President of the European Commission this is called flood A clear indicator of climate change. “This shows the urgency of taking action,” he said.
However, flooding is complex. It can be difficult to determine whether climate change is the driving force behind any flood or making it more devastating. Here’s why.
A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which can mean heavier precipitation. Tennessee saw an enormous amount of rain, nine inches in three hours, over the weekend.
But flooding is the result of both heavy rainfall and the way water is managed through dams, levees or retention ponds, as well as a landscape hydrology that refers to the way water flows, collects and flows off the land. Converting forests or open lands into more impermeable areas, whether parking lots or residential developments, can reduce the amount of land available to absorb runoff.
One reason the Tennessee flood was so deadly was that it was a small-scale type of storm that could defy forecasting tools.
Small-scale storms can be more difficult to predict than large-scale weather systems such as hurricanes rely in part on radar and satellite data. Any heavy rainfall that produces heat can cause forecast models to perform poorly.
Dr. “It’s kind of a worst-case scenario, because it’s a small weather system that happens and evolves rapidly,” Lackmann said. “It’s going to be really hard to get a lot of lead time or forecast alerts for these types of events.”
And correlation studies, a type of research that aims to link climate change to certain extreme weather events, may take some time.
Dr. “It’s not easy to attribute a single weather event to climate change,” Lackmann said. However, he added, “Once you start to see these events happening more often, it becomes more obvious.”
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