Monday's storm shows signs of a changing climate - Maine Public
Monday's storm shows signs of a changing climate | Maine Public
Monday's storm shows signs of a changing climate
Monday's storm that brought heavy wind and rain to Maine is the kind of event that scientists say is becoming more common as climate change warms the planet.
Andrew Pershing, of the nonprofit Climate Central, has been analyzing daily temperatures to determine what anomalies can be attributed to climate change. He says Monday's temperatures in the mid-fifties in Maine are three times as likely because of climate change.
He says it's hard to calculate how climate change is influencing the frequency of storms, but it is affecting their severity.
"We're just much more likely to get storms that give you the equivalent of three or four inches of rain, as opposed to, in the past, it might have been one or two inches of rain, that are more likely this time of year to come in the form of rain as opposed to snow," he says.
Pershing says that's partly because warmer air can hold more moisture. He says this pattern can also lead to more snow during winter storms.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.