AGU - Expect A Tripling Of 100-Year Floods By 2080; Extreme Events Up Even Where Rain Avgs. Falling

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON—Across the continental United States, massive, often-devastating precipitation events—the kind that climate scientists have long called “hundred-year storms”—could become three times more likely and 20 percent more severe by 2079, a new study projects. That is what would happen in a scenario in which greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase at a rapid rate—what researchers call a high-warming scenario. Extreme rainfall events, the so-called hundred-year storms, would then be likely to occur once every 33 years.

The new study finds warming has a more profound effect on both the severity and frequency of extreme precipitation events than it does on common precipitation events. The research was published in AGU’s journal Earth’s Future, which publishes interdisciplinary research on the past, present and future of Earth and its inhabitants.

The findings have serious implications for how humans prepare for the future, according to the researchers. “The five-year flood, the 10-year flood—those aren’t the ones that cause huge amounts of damage and societal disruption,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Los Angeles and lead author of the new study. “That comes when you get 50- or 100-year floods, the low-probability but high-consequence kinds of events.” For example, the occurrence of historic rainfall events such as the one that caused California’s Great Flood of 1862 or Houston’s flooding from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 is increasing much faster than that of lower-magnitude events that happen every decade or so.

Extreme rainfall becomes more extreme

The new study predicts extreme precipitation increases for the entire continental United States and delves into the consequences of those extreme rainfall events: the increases in the number of floods and the number of people who would be exposed to them. Combining climate, water physics and population models, the authors project that, in a high-warming scenario, the increases in extreme precipitation alone would put up to 12 million additional people at risk of exposure to damage and destruction from catastrophic flooding — nearly 30 percent more people than face that risk today.

EDIT

https://climatecrocks.com/2020/11/10/extreme-rainfall-ramps-up/#more-62929

[jimfields33]

1. I'll be 111.

Possibly still be alive with medical advances increasing every year. Hopefully, the environment is priority the next four years and beyond.