The new research shows how human-caused climate change is interacting with natural climate cycles to render existing infrastructure inadequate.group, which performs rapid analyses on highly impactful extreme weather and climate events, hunting for any human fingerprints.
In this newest, especially quick analysis, researchers from multiple institutions found that an ongoing El Niño in the tropical Pacific favored unusually heavy rainfall in the Middle East. In turn, climate change likely intensified the rain. off the Arabian Peninsula and across the Indian Ocean were well above average for this time of year, allowing low pressure areas to draw in abundant moisture, and wring it out over land in the form of towering thunderstorms.Rainfall amounts close to a foot in 24 hours were recorded in parts of the UAE, and about two years' worth of rain fell in Dubai, according to data that was shared with the media.
In this case, researchers were hamstrung to an extent, forced to rely on high-resolution modeled data rather than ground-based observations since the countries struck by the storm do not share their weather data. In addition, such destructive rainfall events in such arid regions are extremely rare, leading to a small sample size and increased uncertainty.Based on the observations, the event was 10-40% more intense than it would have been had it occurred in anThe researchers concluded that human-caused climate change made this extreme rainfall event 10 to 40% heavier than it would have been had it occurred during an El Niño year prior to the Industrial Revolution.