Not only does the wet get wetter over land, but the driest areas get wetter too
From the UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES and the “Flannery says permanent drought over Australia” department
Global warming will increase rainfall in some of the world’s driest areas over land, with not only the wet getting wetter but the dry getting wetter as well.
New research published today in Nature Climate Change has revealed that in the Earth’s dry regions, global warming will bring an overall increase in rainfall and in extreme precipitation events that could lead to flash flooding becoming a more regular event.
“We found a strong relationship between global warming and an increase in rainfall, particularly in areas outside of the tropics,” said lead author Dr Markus Donat from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.
“Within the tropics we saw an increase in rainfall responding to global warming but the actual rate of this increase was less clear.”
Unfortunately for societies, businesses and agricultural activities that exist in arid regions, the expected increase in rainfall over dry areas does not necessarily mean that more water will become available according to the researchers. The additional heat caused by global warming will likely lead to increased evaporation. This means that while there may be more extreme flooding events it may have little impact on overall water storage rates.
“The concern with an increased frequency and in particular intensity of extreme precipitation events in areas that are normally dry is that there may not be infrastructure in place to cope with extreme flooding events,” said Dr Donat.
“Importantly, this research suggests we will see these extreme rainfall events increase at regional levels in dry areas, not just as an average across the globe.”
The researchers were able to reach this conclusion because they looked at regions with similar characteristics rather than trying to compare complex climate variations found when comparing one country or continent with another.
This meant that dry regions in Australia were compared with similarly dry regions in Asia, Africa and many other countries. At the same time, wetter regions across different countries were also compared. This allowed the researchers to directly compare like with like.
Importantly, the findings remained consistent across observations and models.
“With precipitation climate models and observations don’t always tell the same story regarding regional changes, but we were very surprised to find that our results turned out to be highly robust across both,” said Dr Donat.
“It appears the uncertainties in climate models were greatest where the observational uncertainties were greatest. This suggests that improved observations will be vital for those planning for climate change if they are to reasonably determine how future precipitation will change in every corner of the world with global warming.”
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The paper:
More extreme precipitation in the world’s dry and wet regions
Markus G. Donat, Andrew L. Lowry, Lisa V. Alexander, Paul A. O’Gorman & Nicola Maher
AffiliationsContributionsCorresponding author
Nature Climate Change (2016) doi:10.1038/nclimate2941
Received 23 July 2015 Accepted 20 January 2016 Published online 07 March 2016
Intensification of the hydrological cycle is expected to accompany a warming climate1, 2. It has been suggested that changes in the spatial distribution of precipitation will amplify differences between dry and wet regions3, 4, but this has been disputed for changes over land5, 6, 7, 8. Furthermore, precipitation changes may differ not only between regions but also between different aspects of precipitation, such as totals and extremes. Here we investigate changes in these two aspects in the world’s dry and wet regions using observations and global climate models. Despite uncertainties in total precipitation changes, extreme daily precipitation averaged over both dry and wet regimes shows robust increases in both observations and climate models over the past six decades. Climate projections for the rest of the century show continued intensification of daily precipitation extremes. Increases in total and extreme precipitation in dry regions are linearly related to the model-specific global temperature change, so that the spread in projected global warming partly explains the spread in precipitation intensification in these regions by the late twenty-first century. This intensification has implications for the risk of flooding as the climate warms, particularly for the world’s dry regions.
How times change.
2004
Antarctica is likely to be the world’s only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government’s chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/why-antarctica-will-soon-be-the-only-place-to-live-literally-58574.html
Charlie, Izzat Professor Sir David King, a Brit or a Kiwi.
I tried telling PM John Key to get with Australia, and tell the IPCC to go and pound sand; but he referred me to a Sir somebody something, who was his science advisor, and he was all into the coolade of climate change. (AMMGWCCC).
G
This is important. More heat flux at the surface increases the velocity of the water cycle, an important negative feedback on temperature. Remember.
” …… improved observations will be vital for those planning for climate change ….. ”
Does this mean that someone has had a small common sense implant?
” …… improved data corrections will be vital for those planning for climate change ….. ”
Fixed.
Hmmmm…. Wouldn’t increased evaporation cause a significant decrease in air temp? That whole phase change thing? But I’m just a thermal engineer.
Yep. That’s a negative feedback mechanism, which tends to reduce the effect of climate forcings.
Please!There is no room for reality here! The grant stream might dry up!…..Oh , wait…..wetter is dryer! See, we told you so!
Yes,
the Anasazi (Pueblo) Indians in the American SW would totally agree.
….until the Little Ice Age dried things up and made them deceased.
Who told them they should stay there and put up with that ?? Most of the other Native Americans, all of whom carry the same Uzbeki gene, managed to survive the little ice age, as well as the mediaeval warm period.
g
The Darwinism is strong in this one… 🙂
Yeah, they just became the subjects of a popular book.
g
I think this story really belongs in the “Everything that changes is bad, even when it is good” department.
If there is more evaporation that will both cool the land and provide water vapor for the next round of rainfall.
Extra CO2 also makes plants more drought resistant and water-efficient, by improving stomatal conductance relative to transpiration, which is especially helpful in arid regions. (Google finds many articles about it.) When air passes through plant stomata (pores), two things happen: the plant absorbs CO2, and the plant loses water through transpiration. When CO2 levels are higher, the ratio of CO2 absorbed to water lost improves, which improves both plant growth and drought resistance. The plants also commonly respond to elevated CO2 by reducing the density of the stomata in their leaves, which reduces water loss. As a result, some of the world’s deserts and near-deserts are greening.
What makes me wonder if I’m going nuts, is the energy conservation aspect, or lack of it in these folks’ thinking.
Just how many times do they use the same energy –
1. it warms the place – has that not used it up?
oh no
2. It evaporates a load of water. Now play the game, it takes a SHEDLOAD of Joules, didn’t they just get used doing the warming?
no matter
3. the evaporated water condenses as rain, and surprise surprise, there’s another shedload of energy rides over the hill to evaporate it all again.
Where’s it all coming from?
What I suspect, is that these people base their physics on what they see happening in their shower or bathroom (with a coal fired power station driving it) and is diametrically opposed to what goes on ‘out there’ in The Real World
“New research published today in Nature Climate Change has revealed that in the Earth’s dry regions, global warming will bring an overall increase in rainfall and in extreme precipitation events that could lead to flash flooding becoming a more regular”
With more rainfall especially if long term then you will get things growing and the formation of lakes etc., therefore the land will absorb the rain as it won’t be hard, dry and parched. And have the researchers not heard of the African Humid period when the Sahara was green (between 11,000 to 5,000 years ago)? At that time temperatures were higher than now.
http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/green-sahara-african-humid-periods-paced-by-82884405
Anyway, with more evaporation it is likely to feel cooler.
It is well known that elevated CO2 levels increases plant growth and yields. Studies have shown elevated CO2 levels reduce water demand of plants thus enabling them to grow in more arid conditions. An earlier post here (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/02/16/study-increased-carbon-dioxide-is-greening-deserts-globally/) reviews a study by that showed deserts are greening and “the greening likely stems from the impact of rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide on plant water savings and consequent increases in available soil water”.
This study found that increased temperatures has resulted in increased rainfall.but it appears the authors threw out some wild conclusions on the effects of this increased rainfall.
From where I sit, it seems that this is one more argument for an improving climate regime and the possibility that the arid areas of the world may be able to feed their starving populations. – Something that should be celebrated.
Even if it turns out to be true, it assumes we are not going to get better at stormwater conveyance or storage in the future to adapt. Stormwater is becoming seen more and more as a resource…many developed nations will use it as such within the next 20-25 years.
A neighbor of mine when I was growing up, got a couple of plastic barrels and fed the downspout off of her roof into them.
She used the water she collected for her garden.
My sister would sometimes put out pots and pans when it rained and she used the water to wash her hair. We had very hard water where we lived.
I remember 40 years ago (mid 1970’s) the first time I heard of climate change, there was a lot of publicity about the Sahara desert expanding southwards into the semi-desert Sahel region, and the semi-desert in turn expanding southwards into hitherto fertile regions of tropical Africa. I remember this expansion of arid conditions being discussed and documented, and this was in the years before the ideological battles over natural versus anthropogenic climate change really took off.
If my memories about what was being discussed 40 years ago are correct, surely the continued progress, stabilization, or even reversal of desertification in the Sahel at the present time should provide a test-case for your thesis that global warming might make dry area wetter. As one of your earlier commentators pointed out, parts of the Sahara itself were fertile during the post-glacial warm period.
Is the atmosphere wetter or not. I wanna know. AGW says it must be. That’s what’s causing the warming.
Ben Santor said in 2007 it is.
Well, in 2007, according to model simulations.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19526224-500-wetter-atmosphere-points-to-global-warming/
“””Benjamin Santer, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and his colleagues studied satellite measurements of the water content of the atmosphere. They found that total moisture content over the oceans had increased since satellite records began in 1988, but the question remained whether or not this was due to human activity.
So Santer’s team combed through a database of computer simulations involving 22 different climate models, far more than any previous study. This reduced the risk that the idiosyncrasies of any particular model would influence their conclusions.
Some of the simulations included greenhouse gas emissions, some included natural factors such as volcanic eruptions and fluctuations in solar radiation, and some included both or neither.
When they compared the results of the simulations and matched them to the satellite data, the researchers found that the simulations for increased greenhouse gas emissions gave the closest match (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0702872104). Moreover, the amount of extra moisture in the atmosphere was very close to that predicted …””””
So wetter is a negative feedback.
Further the rain that should fall in those arid areas will fill the falling aquifers thus constraining sea level rise and feed a world even more effectively.
There is a lot to enjoy in this. Every time I have been in the Australian dry regions it is the very clouds that give respite from the sun 38C or 40C is moot but the sun obscured by cloud is bliss.
“The additional heat caused by global warming will likely lead to increased evaporation.”
In reality the warm AMO since the mid 1990’s has caused a number of drier regions to become drier, and hence a source of recent surface warming. The cold AMO and multi-year La Nina in the 1970’s caused land surface cooling because of the increase in precipitation. If CO2 had the power to increase positive North Atlantic Oscillation states enough to drive a cold AMO, then the effected dry areas would become wetter. Though if CO2 did had such power, the AMO would not have warmed from the mid 1990’s.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-3-5-6.html
Global warming will, according to the Guardian, make Saruman escape from the Ents at Isengard, reforge the ring of power and become the new dark lord of Mordor.
Global warming will, according to the Guardian, make fingers breaking through toilet paper a more frequent occurrence.
Global warming will, according to the Guardian, make the likelihood of Windows attempts to automatically solve a PC problem, which is already zero, become even less.
Global warming will, according to the Guardian, make Batman assassinate the joker and become himself the evil ruler of Gotham City.
Global warming will, according to the Guardian, make the ship Titanic refloat from the ocean floor and all her intombed crew and passengers come back to life.
Global warming will, according to the Guardian, make England the winners of the next soccer world cup.
Now you’re just being silly.
30 Years ago I worked in Tennant creek (Australia) and it was dry as all the time ,red Pindan dust was everywhere and got into everything .went through last year and it had changed completely .
Green grass knee high ,water in the creeks ,the vines and trees reminded me more of the far north tropics than the Tanami desert .
But I think we need to look at the past climate to predict future climate and even then it’s all just a guess ,as we know the climate changes between ice age to warming and maybe the only thing man could ever do to stave off an ice age would be to burn every lump of coal in the ground but even then we have no idea no proof no evidence to confirm this either way .
Robert — please see for rainfall variability and soil-water balance simulations my Ph.D. Thesis “An agroclimatic classification of the semi-arid tropics” which is available in The Australian National University, Canberra Library [1985]; and A paper “Soils and Climate” by J. Williams, K.J.Day, R.F.Isbell and S.J.Reddy [1985; pages 31-92] piblished in a book “Agro-Research for the semi-arid tropics: north-west Australia” Edited by Russell C. Muchow, University of Queensland Press, St Lucas, London, New York. They are highly variable — starting and ending periods show very high. Because of this the proposed commercial agriculture over this region failed.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Izzit prohibited to use 4-letter words in a PhD thesis title ?
g
What caused all this ruckus…http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=total_precipitable_water/orthographic=134.76,-27.38,1209
Hydrological cycle and temperature versus precipitation are theoretical exercises. They are modified by several localized conditions. One of them is wind speed and direction.
In early 70s an article was published by eminent British Scientist in a reputed Journal wherein he showed precipitation in “Thar Desert” is increasing. As usual I went to the IMD [next to my place of work] library during lunch break, the librarian showed this publication. We found the error wherein he did not accounted change in units from inches to millimeters from 1957. This was brought to the notice of DDGC and he in turn informed the author. The author withdrew the paper from the Journal.
The general theory is in April if Northwest India [Thar Desert zone] warmer, we get the early monsoon [over Kerala Coast] and thus good monsoon rains. The fact is the onset of monsoon varies between 15th May and 15th June with an average date of 31st May/1st June – follows a 52 year cycle similar to Fortaleza Precipitation in northeast Brazil. Also, the monsoon reaches the Northwest India in flag end of the monsoon.
The Indian Southwest Monsoon starts just before the Sun reaches its northern point in the Northern Hemisphere in June and ends by September when the Sun crosses over to Southern Hemisphere. The seasonal temperature variation reaches maximum in May and Minimum in January. Thus, the Northeast Monsoon starts in the descending phase of temperature in October [post-monsoon season]. This is the period when severe cyclonic activity occurs. They follow a 56-year cycle similar to the Northeast Monsoon precipitation — Southwest Monsoon precipitation at all India level presents a 60-year cycle. The Northeast Monsoon Rainfall presents high year to year variability compared to Southwest Monsoon Rainfall. Pre-monsoon season [before June] occurs not only thunderstorms but also occasionally cyclones. El Nino years present a range of rainfall patterns, starting from deficit to normal to excess rainfall over different years.
The other main issue that controls the precipitation pattern over different parts of the country is Climate System like Orography — Western Ghats, Eastern Ghats and Himalayan Ranges.
There is no global warming as such, the word global warming is only a misnomer. This global average temperature [example of one degree rise] is an average of temperatures over different parts/regions of the globe wherein they are controlled by local conditions that are varying with the time over the natural variations.
It is the right time that researchers/research institutes must give top priority to look into more of local and regional investigations that help people of the region rather than time pass global hypothetical studies. It has no use and at the same time waste public money.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Global warming means that the Antarctic highlands (Vostok Station) now only gets down to -93.4 deg. C instead of all the way to -94 deg. C, like it was 150 years ago.
g
AP stylebook might allow that to be described in public with pretenses of credibilty as “baking.”
I don’t know about what effects “warming” is having / will have on rainfall but CSIRO was quite clear that its research showed rising CO2 [CO2 fertilization] was boosting vegetation in deserts around the planet
http://www.csiro.au/en/News/News-releases/2013/Deserts-greening-from-rising-CO2
Well of course it will rain more over dry areas, we already know that is the reason why sea level rise isnt as high as forecast because of the giant sponge effect. Which is just as well because we learnt today that they wont be able to pump enough water over Antarctica to compensate for rampaging sea levels. Oh lordy, I have only just recovered from gender biased glaciers and the equitable human-ice interface study. My head is hurting again already.
no more climatology let s study modelology… where models are “our” models”,” the” modeis, “their “models , les last models the best models etc…
is it science????
Look at the news: Unusual flooding in Dubaï is ongoing. Severe storms have released rain levels up to 240mm in that region where the mean annual rainfall is about 75mm
Well that is what you get when you build your own islands out of sand in a desert area, even a wet one.
g
The real tragedy here is that there is no discussion of why clouds form, which is not purely a warmth factor. Clouds are not steam.
Cloud formation requires (1) A particulate (dust molecule, algae on the ocean surface, …) (2) in the presence of moisture and (3) the particulate is struck by a galactic ray. This causes clouds to form.
Galactic ray intensity increases when our sun’s activity level decreases, as is evidenced by decreased sunspots as is now the case.
Clouds both relocate moisture in the form of rain, sleet or snow and clouds reflect infrared solar energy away from our home planet earth. Snow, ice and glaciers also reflect more solar energy away from our planet.
All of this will inevitably lead to a cooling of our planet and perhaps a little ice age.
Well actually all you need is a non-hydrophobic surface that has a curvature that is less than some very large number, and somewhat larger than molecular size.
Microbes work quite well as ‘aerosols’, and as for #3, you don’t need to have a CR hit anything like a particulate. Simply hitting something of atomic or molecular size and creating other charged particles will do it. It’s the charged particle tracks that cause condensation in cloud chamber experiments.
You just need the surface tension excess pressure (2t/r) to be less than the hydrogen bonding forces, between H2O molecules. So any landing pad larger than a certain radius works.
G
“HAS revealed?” “Will bring?” Really? This lacks the normal temporizing of CAGW press releases. So much so that it is extraordinary. Does the paper likewise contain extraordinary proof?