New Delhi: India is not the only country braving torrential rains in the past week or so. Several countries in the world are reeling under similar floods. In Japan, heavy rains have caused floods and mudslides that left two people dead and at least six others missing.
The Associated Press reported that people in New York have expressed that the flooding in Hudson Valley and in Vermont is the worst they’ve seen since Hurricane Irene’s devastation in 2011. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people have been driven out of their homes by earlier flooding in northern, central, and southeastern China. Heavy rains have also swelled up rivers in Turkey and along the Black Sea coast.
According to scientists, while all these flooding events are separated by long distances, they all have something in common- they are the result of storms forming in a warmer atmosphere, making extreme rainfall a more frequent reality now. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which results in storms dumping more precipitation that can have deadly outcomes. Pollutants, especially carbon dioxide, and methane, are heating up the atmosphere. Instead of allowing heat to radiate away from Earth into space, they hold onto it.
Scientists have warned that the additional predicted warming will only make it worse. According to them, temperatures and humidity that feel like 40 degrees Celsius should happen 20 to 50 times a year by mid-century. In a study in 2022, researchers said that by 2100, that brutal heat index may linger for most of the summer for places like the US Southeast.
Climate change is not the cause
While climate change is not the cause of storms unleashing rainfall, these storms are forming in an atmosphere that is becoming warmer and wetter. “Warm air expands and cool air contracts. You can think of it as a balloon – when it’s heated the volume is going to get larger, so therefore it can hold more moisture,” Rodney Wynn, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service told AP.
It may be recalled, that in 2022, several parts of Pakistan reeled under devastating floods that worst witnessed in Asia’s modern-day history. Germany, China and others faced similar deluges as well.
