Climate Change Helped Fuel Heavy Rains that Led to Devastating Hill Country Flood

Editor s Note This article originally appeared at Inside Context News a nonprofit independent news organization that covers context power and the climate It is republished with permission Sign up for their newsletter here Heavy rains over the weekend that pushed the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country to its second-highest height on record had by Tuesday resulted in more than shared deaths including children from the all-girl Camp Mystic But as search and rescue teams and supporters sweep the banks of the river for missing people the number of approved deaths is expected to grow Situation scientists mentioned the torrential downpours on July exemplify the devastating outcomes of weather intensified by a warming atmosphere These disasters they explained will become more frequent as people around the world continue to burn fossil fuels and heat the planet This is not a one-off anymore reported Claudia Benitez-Nelson a context scientist at the University of South Carolina Extreme rainfall events are increasing across the U S as temperatures rise she declared Warmer temperatures allow for the atmosphere to hold more water vapor producing heavier rainfalls she and other setting scientists revealed This coupled with old infrastructure and ineffective warning systems can be disastrous It is an established fact that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions have led to an increased frequency and or intensity of certain weather and weather extremes since pre-industrial time in particular for temperature extremes the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Environment Change broadcasted in At the global scale the intensification of heavy precipitation will follow the rate of increase in the maximum amount of moisture that the atmosphere can hold as it warms about per C of global warming The U S regime s fifth National Circumstances Assessment published in November says that the number of days with extreme precipitation will continue to increase as the atmosphere warms and that these changes in precipitation patterns can lead to increased flood hazards impacting infrastructure ecosystems and communities Central Texas is infamous for its flash flooding and arid soil hard-packed ground into which water does not easily infiltrate So when rain hits the ground it runs off the region s hilly terrain and canyons and accumulates into creeks and rivers rapidly overwhelming them causing them to rise speedily The flash flooding wasn t a conclusion of a full-strength storm Benitez-Nelson declared but a remnant of a tropical storm That to me is really sad and deeply alarming Benitez-Nelson revealed Circumstances change is turning ordinary weather into these disasters Damp remnants of Tropical Storm Barry moved up from eastern Mexico as humid air also moved north from Mexico s southwestern coast stalling over Texas Hill Country The warm air in both the low and high levels of the atmosphere is a recipe for intense rainfall announced John Nielsen-Gammon the state s appointed climatologist for more than years He and his colleagues compiled a list of all the rainfall events in Texas that produced more than inches of rain a sparse years ago One common feature the climatologists unveiled was when wind blew from south to north or when moisture was brought northward from the tropics he stated That sets up the possibility of very heavy rainfall Nielsen-Gammon disclosed He concluded in a record last year that extreme rain in Texas could increase percent by Increased moisture from the tropics is driven by warming oceans The oceans absorb over percent of excess heat in the atmosphere produced by greenhouse gas emissions warming ocean temperatures down to depths of meters Tropical storms gain strength from heat and evaporate more hastily at higher temperatures adding more water vapor to the atmosphere Nielsen-Gammon noted A scrutiny circulated Monday by ClimaMeter a project funded by the European Union and the French National Center for Scientific Research detected that meteorological conditions leading up to Friday morning s floods were warmer and percent wetter than similar events of the past Natural variability alone can t explain the changes in rain associated with the exceptional weather the account disclosed and points to human-caused weather change as one of the main drivers of the event ClimaMeter s analysis shows the difference in surface temperature precipitation and wind speed between the present surroundings from and earlier decades from to State change loads the dice toward more frequent and more intense floods disclosed Davide Faranda one of the summary s authors who is research director of setting physics in the Laboratoire de Science du Climat et de l Environnement part of the French National Center for Scientific Research The flash flood that tore through Camp Mystic at night when people were preponderance vulnerable shows the deadly cost of underestimating this shift He added A percent increase of rain is a lot but doesn t really make the tragedy If you have a good alert system if the population knows the hazard related to context change for this weather phenomena and can take them into account not minimize them then you can save lives because it s not double the amount of precipitation it s not three times It s something that we can handle if we are prepared Other factors in the flooding death toll such as land use change urban sprawl and warning system failures weren t analyzed and may have further amplified the mishap the summary stated We are in a more extreme situation Faranda mentioned And every year year after year we make it more extreme by burning more fossil fuels These extremes now start to touch the limits of what is normal life on this planet in terms of humans in terms of infrastructure that we built with the old setting in terms of resilience of the ecosystem Initial estimates for the damage and economic loss of this mishap will reach beyond billion according to AccuWeather Inside Environment News Staff Writer Bob Berwyn contributed to this record The post Atmosphere Change Helped Fuel Heavy Rains that Led to Devastating Hill Country Flood appeared first on The Texas Observer