Climate change linked to rise in excess rainfall

London: The rise of rainfall events setting ever new records in the past 30 years is linked to rising global temperatures which are caused by greenhouse-gas emissions from burning fossil fuels, says a new study. An advanced statistical analysis of rainfall data from the years 1901 to 2010 derived from thousands of weather stations across the globe show that over 1980-2010 there were 12 per cent more of these events than expected in a stationary climate, a scenario without global warming.

While before 1980, multi-decadal fluctuations in extreme rainfall events are explained by natural variability, the researchers detected a clear upward trend in the past few decades towards more unprecedented daily rainfall events due to the global warming.

The record-breaking anomaly has distinct patterns across Earth's continents with generally wet regions seeing an over-proportional increase and drier regions less so. In contrast, some regions experienced a significant decrease of record-breaking daily rainfall events. In the Mediterranean, the reduction is 27 per cent, and in the Western US 21 per cent. Both regions are at the risk of severe droughts.