by The California coast is currently receiving heavy rain from atmospheric rivers, essentially rivers in the sky that collect moisture from tropical areas and redistribute the water to higher latitudes. The current El Niño pattern favors multiple rounds of heavy rain and an overall period of unsettled, rainy weather, as forecasts show.
The relentless humidity is causing life-threatening flooding in some of Southern California’s most populous cities, including Los Angeles and San Diego, which were already soaked from a previous round of heavy rain late this week spent
Climate change and a strong El Niño event could both play a role in the intensity of the effects brought by atmospheric rivers when they hit the West Coast, according to scientists.
Although it cannot be said that a particular weather event is due to climate change as it occurs, research shows that climate change is making impacts from natural events, such as atmospheric rivers, more intense.
MORE: Live California storm updates: Life-threatening flooding ravages Southern California
There are many variables involved when river atmospheric events are linked to climate change, and this year another major variable is El Niño. Some experts warn that more research is needed before the link between climate change and atmospheric rivers can be more specific and with higher certainty.
Julie Kalansky, a climate scientist and deputy director of operations at the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told ABC News that much remains to be learned about the potential connections between atmospheric rivers. , climate change, and El Niño, broader connections can be made to the extreme consequences of certain events.
“More of it [California’s] “Precipitation, so rain and snowfall, will come from atmospheric rivers, according to model projections,” Kalansky said.
MORE: Another round of extreme storms could create more life-threatening conditions in flooded Southern California
In a warming climate, more winter precipitation will fall as rain instead of snow, and extreme events will increase more in the winter season since winter is the season with the greatest overall warming, according to the Fifth National Climate Assessment, released in November. .
The report found that the effects of climate change were worsening in all parts of the US
Experts say this change in precipitation patterns could be accompanied by more frequent and more intense extreme rainfall events, adding that atmospheric rivers have the potential to create more extreme precipitation events in the future.
As global temperatures continue to warm, it allows the atmosphere to hold more moisture, causing rainfall events to become more frequent and extreme, according to recent research by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
MORE: California’s historic rainfall could predict more rain in the coming weeks
More intense rainfall events also increase the frequency and scale of flash floods, as the inflow of water is greater than existing infrastructure was built to handle.
In the continental US, California already experiences the most wet and dry conditions from year to year, Kalansky told ABC News. Southern California has an even more variable climate than Northern California, even without the current El Niño event, which is contributing to the excess moisture in recent weeks.
“Climate projections show that the variation between wet and dry is expected to become even more variable in the future,” Kalansky said.
In states like California, the latest research shows that human-induced climate change may lead to more frequent but more intense precipitation events. Wild swings, for example, from devastating drought to record precipitation will become more common and extreme in the coming years, potentially leading to more damaging impacts, according to the California Climate Adaptation Strategy.
The current El Niño pattern favors multiple rounds of heavy rain and an overall period of unsettled, rainy weather, according to NOAA. During the winter months, El Niño tends to bring wetter than average conditions across much of the southern US, including much of California.
How climate change is contributing to the atmospheric rivers slamming the West Coast appeared first on abcnews.go.com
