Heavy rainfall

Torrential downpours sent muddy water racing through streets in Libya, Greece and Spain and flooded parts of Hong Kong and New York City in September 2023. Thousands of people died in the city of Derna, Libya. Zagora, Greece, saw a record 30 inches of rain, the equivalent of a year and a half of rain falling in 24 hours. A few weeks earlier, monsoon rains triggered deadly landslides and flooding in the Himalayas that killed dozens of people in India. After severe flooding on almost every continent this year, including mudslides and flooding in California in early 2023 and devastating floods in Vermont and New York in July, it can seem like extreme rainfall is becoming more common. So, what role does global warming play in this? And importantly, what can we do to adapt to this new reality? A powerful storm system in 2023 flooded communities across Vermont and left large parts of the capital, Montpelier, underwater. John Tul...

Powerful storm systems that hit the U.S. Northeast starting July 9, 2023, dumped close to 10 inches of rain on New York’s Lower Hudson Valley in less than a day and sent mountain rivers spilling over their banks and into towns across Vermont. Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said he hadn’t seen rainfall like it since Hurricane Irene devastated the region in 2011. Extreme water disasters like this have disrupted lives in countries around the world in the past few years, from the Alps and Western Europe to Pakistan, India and Australia, along with several U.S. states in 2022 and 2023. The role of climate change is becoming increasingly evident in these types of deluges. Cars were stranded in floodwater on the campus of the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., on July 10, 2023. U.S. Military Academy via AP Studies by scientists around the world show that the water cycle has been inte...