Anecdotes are not evidence; climate is what we expect while weather is what we get. A single weather event isn't enough to be evidence of climate change, but enough single events add up to a pattern. And the pattern is worth noting.
A news report from Air Force Magazine has some details from the recent torrential rains that hit the south. As an organization with a huge interest in what the weather is doing at any time, the Air Force has to pay attention. June L. Kim reports:
Eglin AFB, Fla., and near-by Hurlburt Field, closed this week due to torrential rainfall that flooded parts of the East Coast, Eglin spokeswoman Lois Walsh told Air Force Magazine. Eglin closed April 30 and reopened the following day, but Hurlburt Field, which is just 12 miles southwest of Eglin, remained closed as of Thursday afternoon. The area received more than 10 inches of rain during a two-day period, said Walsh
How does this add up?
Eglin-based weather personnel determined that last month was the second wettest April on record with 18.28 inches falling on the area, she said. “Our normal total precipitation for the entire year is 61.6 inches,” and they’ve already received about half that, said Walsh.
Scientific American, some minor news rag
according to FOX News, has
the bigger picture.
According to data from the weather station at Pensacola Regional Airport, 15.55 inches of rain -- the greatest rainfall amount from any calendar day on record—fell Tuesday. Data from the station go back to 1879.
"The 24-hour amount is between a 1 in 50 and 1 in 100 year event," forecasters from the National Weather Service Mobile/Pensacola Forecast Office wrote in a report on the storm. The two-day total, at 20.47 inches, is between a one-in-100- and one-in-200-year event.
...The amount of rain that fell in one hour at the Pensacola Regional Airport station—5.68 inches—is a one-in-200- to one-in-500-year event, forecasters reported.The heavy rains wiped out bridges and formed sinkholes in roads, as well, enough to cripple a region accustomed to the heavy rains that often accompany tropical storms and hurricanes.
emphasis added
And what might be concluded from this and similar events?
Although the Southeast has overall seen less rainfall over the last 110 years, an increase in extreme precipitation events is predicted to occur as the climate changes and the Earth's atmosphere warms and holds more water vapor.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has tracked an increase in extremes of one-day precipitation in the United States, a change that is in line with how climate change is projected to affect severe weather.
emphasis added
It doesn't rain everywhere, of course, and generally not all the time - BUT…. the odds of winter flooding are increasing as a result of Global Warming.
At the Environmental Change Institute in Oxford, researchers Nathalie Schaller and Friederike Otto analysed results from almost 40,000 climate model calculations to test the impact of climate change on Britain’s winter rains. Their calculations modelled the weather across the country on a 50km grid. They compared the results of 12,842 simulations based on the current global sea surface temperatures, with 25,893 results computed on the assumption that global warming had never occurred – that fossil fuel burning had not raised CO2 to today’s levels and ocean surfaces were cooler.
….The results showed a subtle bias towards more extreme weather in today’s warming world. Events that would have been expected once in 100 years before global warming can now be anticipated to occur once in 80 years. In essence, the probability of extreme winter floods appears to have increased by 25% on pre-industrial levels.
Climate change denialistas, among their arguments, often claim that trying to do anything about it is too expensive. Well, the costs are real and so is the death toll - and
it's not getting better.
Flooding is an often underrated hazard when it comes to severe weather, Bunting noted. [Bill Bunting is operations chief at the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.] It causes more property damage in the United States than any other weather-related event.
On average, flooding leads to 89 deaths and $8.3 billion in damage annually, and a large number of those deaths come from people driving into floodwaters. The National Weather Service has a marketing campaign called "Turn Around, Don't Drown" that aims to teach people about the risks of driving into floodwaters.
emphasis added
Way back at the beginning of Bill Cosby's career, he put out a comedy record (an actual analog plastic disc, before audio CDs) with several sketches revolving around Noah. There's a punch line from those sketches that climate change deniers should be asked. "How long can you tread water?"
http://youtu.be/...