Unmitigated climate change will cause substantial increases in large-scale rainfall events in Europe and North America, according to researchers from the UK.
The analysis suggests that policy makers could need to develop new management strategies “to take into account the changing frequency and intensity of these events”, says Matt Hawcroft of the University of Exeter, UK.
Warmer climates are expected to deliver precipitation extremes of greater frequency and intensity. Precipitation intensity is a product of the Clausius–Clapeyron relation, which describes how much more water the atmosphere can hold as its temperature increases. But the relation is a simple scale that gives little indication where new intense precipitation will occur. […]
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