Climate change will increase the frequency and severity of wet-hot extremes, according to a new study.
Climate change will increase the frequency and severity of wet-hot extremes, according to a new study.
Climate change will make simultaneous rainfall and heat extremes more common, intense, and ubiquitous, experts predict, more so than dry-hot circumstances.
Wet-hot extremes will also be more severe and cover a broader region than dry-hot extremes.
The ability of the air to contain moisture rises by 6 to 7% for every degree Celsius increase in temperature.
The hot-and-humid air produces more water available to fall as rain, making wet-hot extremes more likely, according to the scientists’ analysis published in the journal Earth’s Future.
Floods and landslides may become more common under wet-hot circumstances because heat waves first dry up the soil, diminishing its capacity to absorb water.
They claim that subsequent rainfall has a harder time entering the soil and instead flows over the surface, causing to floods, landslides, and agricultural output losses.
They predicted that wet-hot extremes would cover a bigger region and be more severe than dry-hot extremes.
While South Africa, the Amazon, and parts of Europe are expected to become drier, many other regions, including the eastern United States, eastern and southern Asia, Australia, and central Africa, are expected to receive more precipitation, according to climate models run under current emissions scenarios.
much densely populated areas already prone to geologic hazards, such as landslides and mudflows, and which produce much of the world’s foodstuffs, are anticipated to be seriously struck by such “compound climate extremes.”
“These compound climate extremes have attracted considerable attention in recent decades due to their disproportionate pressures on the agricultural, industrial, and ecosystems sectors — much more than individual extreme events alone,” said Haijiang Wu, lead researcher at Northwest A&F University in China.
The 2021 European floods are an illustration of how the planet is already experiencing wet-hot extremes.
High heat that summer dried up the land. Soon after, huge rains rushed over the dry soil’s surface, causing major landslides and flash floods that washed away buildings and took lives.
Wet-hot environments should therefore be included in climate adaption plans.
“If we ignore the risk of compound wet-hot extremes and fail to provide adequate early warning, the consequences for water-food-energy security would be unimaginable,” Wu added.
