![]() ![]() You can think of the atmosphere like a bucket. Importantly, climate change increases the ability of the atmosphere to hold water vapor. Is climate change causing an increase in extreme precipitation? What kind of storms are causing it? And then also thinking about the anthropogenic footprint. Based on that, we started looking at what’s causing that increase in extreme precipitation. Then, we saw a 50 percent increase post-1995. ![]() The data from 1901 to 1995 shows steady extreme precipitation events - basically one event a year on average. If we’re trying to project 60 years into the future, the best way to do that is to start with the past observations, and there is a really clear increase in extreme precipitation in the recorded observations. How does that connect to the study you published in May? In 2021, you published a study that examined the data on extreme precipitation in the Northeast between 19. The other way to think about it is that it’s basically the statistical once-per-year event. When we look across the Northeast, on average that’s an event that has about 1.5 inches of liquid precipitation. Then we take the top one percent and that becomes the threshold. We look at every wet day, so every day in which we experience rainfall or snowfall, and we rate them from largest to smallest. What qualifies as an extreme precipitation event here in the Northeast? ![]() I talked to Winter about the implications of his research and the conversations about adaptation he’s having with local officials and farmers to help them prepare for the coming deluge. Jonathan Winter, an associate professor of geography at Dartmouth College, has co-authored two recent studies on extreme precipitation events in the Northeast, both documenting the rising number of such events in the Northeast over the past few decades and estimating how much more they’ll increase in the future. In Vermont, historic flooding in parts of the state surpassed levels seen during 2011’s Tropical Storm Irene, but this time it wasn’t the result of a tropical storm - just a really, really wet 48 hours - and the kind of extreme precipitation event the Northeast will see a lot more of in the coming decades. This month, the treacherous flash floods that inundated streets and gnarled bridges in New England, the tristate area, the Adirondacks, and Pennsylvania have served as a stark reminder - along with air-quality alerts, wildfires, and record heat - that the Northeast is hardly safe from the devastation caused by extreme weather events. Photo: Theodore Parisienne for NY Daily News via Getty Images Major flooding struck South Street and Broad Street in Manhattan on Sunday, July 16. NWS Precipitation Image overlays are provided by the National Weather Service. USGS rain-gage data shown in the table are available at Water Data for the Nation : Current North Carolina Precipitation
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