Scientists find global warming fingerprints in extreme rainstorms, floodsThe Toronto Star: Extreme rainstorms and snowfalls have grown substantially stronger, two studies suggest, with scientists for the first time finding the telltale fingerprints of man-made global warming on downpours that often cause deadly flooding. Two studies in Nature link heavy rains to increases in greenhouse gases more than ever before...
Both studies should weaken the argument that climate change is a 'victimless crime,' said Myles Allen of the University of Oxford... 'Extreme weather is what actually hurts people.'... Since 1950, flooding has killed more than 2.3 million people, according to the World Health Organization's disaster database... Similar studies are now underway to examine whether last year's deadly Russian heat wave and Pakistan floods... can be scientifically attributed to global warming...
For years scientists, relying on basic physics and climate knowledge, have said global warming would likely cause extremes in temperatures and rainfall. But this is the first time researchers have been able to point to a demonstrable cause-and-effect by using the rigorous and scientifically accepted method of looking for the 'fingerprints' of human-caused climate change [read the entire article for methodology]... In fact, the computer models underestimated the increase in extreme rain and snow...
Similar fingerprinting studies have found human-caused greenhouse gas emissions triggered changes in more than a dozen other ecological ways: temperatures on land, the ocean's surface, heat content in the depths of the oceans, temperature extremes, sea level pressure, humidity at ground level and higher in the air, general rainfall amounts, the extent of Arctic sea ice, snowpack levels and timing of runoff in the western United States, Atlantic Ocean salinity, wildfire damage, and the height of the lower atmosphere.
All those signs say global warming is here, said Xuebin Zhang, a research scientist for the Canadian government and co-author of the Northern Hemisphere study. 'It is affecting us in multiple directions.' 'We start to see an emerging pattern,' said Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria...'And we have no one to blame but ourselves.'
