If you thought that ‘deserts in for a drenching’ is an unthinkable phenomenon then climate change is certainly going to change that perception. Climate change could bring more rain to desert areas in future, claims a study conducted by Nature Climate Change.
As global temperature continues to rise, more rain, heavy downpour and flooding situation will become common in some of the driest places such as the Sahara Desert or Australia’s desert region.
The study also cites that climate change is expected to intensify weather extremes such as bushfires, cold snaps, heatwaves and storms.
Increasing temperature across the globe means the air has greater capacity to hold moisture from the ocean, leading to more rain in arid regions of the world.
“In both wet and dry regions, we see these significant and robust increases in heavy precipitation. We found a strong relationship between global warming and an increase in rainfall, particularly in areas outside of the tropics,” lead author Markus Donat, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales, told Nature.
The team of scientists collected data from 1951 to 2010 on extreme precipitation events from 11,000 weather stations around the world. During that time, the number of days with "extreme precipitation" increased 1 percent to 2 percent per decade.
Though the study does not tell exact locations where extreme weather will take place but certainly points out how the weather risks will change.
Image Credit: abc.net.au
