Climate change is making severe storms both more common and more intense.

Climate change is making severe storms both more common and more intense.

First the river rose in Texas. Then, the rains fell hard over North Carolina, New Mexico and Illinois.

In less than a week, there were at least four 1-in-1,000-year rainfall events across the United States — intense deluges that are thought to have roughly a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year.

“Any one of these intense rainfall events has a low chance of occurring in a given year,” said Kristina Dahl, vice president for science at the nonprofit organization Climate Central, “so to see events that are historic and record-breaking in multiple parts of the country over the course of one week is even more alarming.”

It’s the kind of statistic, several experts said, that is both eye-opening and likely to become more common because of climate change.

  • LogicalDrivel@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    411·
    1 day ago

    So remember that tipping point we were warned about? Yeah, its happening. The deep ocean currents in the southern ocean have reversed.. TLDR: warmer saltier carbon dioxide rich water is now coming up from the deep ocean instead of being trapped there. It is melting sea-ice from below and could eventually lead to the reversal or stagnation of other ocean currents.

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      211·
      23 hours ago

      Even better, this occurred about a decade ago, and we didn’t even realize it untill now… meaning the global thermohaline circulation cycle has been collapsing for a decade.

      Oops.

      Irreversible. Can’t fix.

      No going back.

      In all likelihood, we have Great Filtered ourselves.

      Best case scenario, we get a century or so, starting basically now, of civilization collapse, mass famine and death, attempts at mass migrations that mostly get Holocausted, and of course wars, potentially nuclear wars…

      …and then maybe in 100 years the remaining human population of roughly 1-2 billion can maybe figure out a new paradigm… if we have not just permanently broken the biosphere, and already extracted all the easily extractable natural resources.

      • brandocorp@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2·
        12 hours ago

        My money is on nuclear self-destruction. We have way too many of these things in the hands of extremely poor leadership. It really feels like it’s just a matter of time.