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[SArjuna@aol.com]

Environment: Intense rainfall due to global warming could raise flood risk
Ian Sample, science correspondent
The Guardian, 
Friday August 8 2008


Climate scientists have issued a fresh warning over the future risk of 
flooding after research showed heavy rainstorms are likely to become even 
more 
intense than predicted.

Rainfall is expected to increase with global warming because the atmosphere 
can hold more water as it heats up, but the extent to which rainfall patterns 
will change in the future has been unclear.

Writing in the US journal Science, researchers warn regions that are already 
vulnerable to flooding will be hit hardest by rainstorms in the future, and 
that previous predictions may have underestimated how intense these 
rainstorms 
will be.

Researchers from Reading and Miami Universities used satellite data from 1987 
to 2004 to see how natural changes in surface and air temperatures caused by 
El Niño weather events influenced rainfall over the tropics. They found a 
clear link, with countries experiencing far more rainfall as temperatures 
rose.

"When we first looked, we saw that the warm periods were associated with the 
periods of heaviest rainfall, but when we looked more carefully, we found the 
models underestimated what the satellite data showed by a factor of two to 
three," said Richard Allan, who led the study.

If other researchers are able to confirm the findings, it suggests areas 
already prone to flooding may experience far more problems as global 
temperatures 
rise.

Yesterday one of the government's chief science advisers, Robert Watson, said 
the UK must prepare for a 4C rise in average temperatures, despite Europe's 
declared goal of no more than a 2C rise.


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