rainfall tagged posts

The past century of human-induced warming has increased rainfall variability over 75% of the Earth’s land area—particularly over Australia, Europe and eastern North America, new research shows.

The findings, by Chinese researchers and the UK Met Office, were published in the journal Science. They provide the first systematic observational evidence that climate change is making global rainfall patterns more volatile.

Climate models had predicted this variability would worsen under climate change. But these new findings show rainfall variability has already worsened over the past 100 years—especially in Australia.

Past studies of the observational record either focused on long-term average rain, which is not systematically changing globally...

Satellite data over the tropics, between 10 degrees S and 10 degrees N, shows a slight dip in rainfall when the moon is directly overhead or underfoot. The top panel shows the air pressure, the middle shows the rate of change in air pressure, and the bottom shows the rainfall difference from the average. The change is 0.78 micrometers, or less than one ten thousandth of an inch, per hour. Credit: Tsubasa Kohyama/University of Washington Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-01-phase-moon-affects-amount-rainfall.html#jCp

When the moon is high in the sky, it creates bulges in the planet’s atmosphere that creates imperceptible changes in the amount of rain that falls below...