The climate crisis is impacting weather patterns and the water cycle in dangerous ways. Climate change is making weather less predictable as heavy rainfalls are more likely. Urban flooding occurs when water flows into an urban region faster than it can be absorbed into the soil or moved to and stored in a lake or reservoir. It can be caused by flash flooding, coastal flooding, river floods or any place there is a water source. So, why does climate change sometimes mean more rain? Simply, the rate of evaporation from the ocean is increasing as the world warms. If you know anything about the rain cycle, the clouds floating overhead contain water vapor and cloud droplets, which are small drops of condensed water. Within a cloud, water droplets condense onto one another, causing the droplets to grow. When these water droplets get too heavy to stay suspended in the cloud, they fall to Earth as rain. Water is continually evaporating and condensing in the sky. Most of the condensed water in clouds does not fall as precipitation because their fall speed is not large enough to overcome currents that support the clouds. When the temperature increases, so does the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere. Rising temperatures due to increased heat-trapping emissions causes more water to evaporate from the oceans in to the clouds above. The warmer the atmosphere, the more water vapor, the more rain.
Commenti