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Author Topic: "Rivers of rain"  (Read 2818 times)

Anne

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"Rivers of rain"
« on: July 24, 2013, 03:43:55 PM »
This meme has been all over the UK press in the past 24 hours. The story in The Independent is fairly typical:
Quote
<snip> A study has found that atmospheric rivers over Britain will become more frequent and intense as global temperatures rise this century in response to increasing concentrations of  man-made carbon dioxide in the  atmosphere, he said.

“Atmospheric rivers could become stronger in terms of their moisture transport. In a warming world, atmospheric water vapour content is  expected to rise … with air temperature. This is likely to result in increased water vapour transport,” Dr Lavers said.

“The link between atmospheric rivers and flooding is already well  established, so an increase in the frequency of atmospheric rivers  is likely to lead to an increased  number of heavy winter rainfall events and flood,” he said.

“More intense atmospheric rivers are likely to lead to higher rainfall totals, and thus larger flood events,” said Dr Lavers, the lead author of the study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, with his colleagues at the University of Reading.
More at the link above.


This seems to be the study in question, published back in March. (pdf, open access)

Jim Hunt

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Re: "Rivers of rain"
« Reply #1 on: July 24, 2013, 05:11:58 PM »
This meme has been all over the UK press in the past 24 hours.

It was also in Scientific American and then New Scientist back in the Spring. See my report at:

http://econnexus.org/spring-has-sprung-what-else-is-news/
"The most revolutionary thing one can do always is to proclaim loudly what is happening" - Rosa Luxemburg

Anne

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Re: "Rivers of rain"
« Reply #2 on: July 24, 2013, 05:27:41 PM »
Thanks, Jim. I was sure I'd seen it before today. Seems as if it's the flavour of the month right now though we haven't seen anything yet in terms of rain.