Rainfall Extremes Increasingly Threaten Mountain Regions and Areas Downstream From Them
By Bob Berwyn
A global increase of extreme precipitation, well outside the range of natural variability, has been well-documented by scientists. It’s one of the hallmarks of human-caused global warming, and new research published this week in Nature shows that high elevation areas, including most of the mountains of Western North America, are particularly vulnerable to deluges that can trigger landslides, floods and severe erosion.
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.