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  • From: SArjuna@aol.com
  • To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
  • Subject: [permaculture] Warming increases flood risk manyfold
  • Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2008 09:45:39 EDT

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 NiƱo 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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