Is Climate Change Causing More Record-Breaking Hail?

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Enormous hailstones raise the question of whether global warming will intensify hailstorms

Just five days after a 6.2-inch hailstone fell in Italy and set a new European record, another ball of ice with a diameter of 7.6 inches —more than twice the size of a softball—dropped from stormy skies over the country and broke the record again.

That’s because there are other climate change effects that might make hail more likely. Hail-producing thunderstorms have three ingredients, Friedrich says: strong updrafts ; an unstable atmosphere ; and abundant atmospheric moisture. Many storms produce hailstones that never hit the ground; they’re small enough that they melt as they fall through warmer air near the planet’s surface. But large enough hailstones can strike at a deadly velocity. A baseball-sized hunk of hail falls at 100 miles per hour , says Harold Brooks, a senior research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Severe Storms Laboratory.

But climate change may stymie hail in more southerly latitudes, such as Texas. This is both because warmer air melts hailstones before they hit the ground and because severe storms may have a harder time getting started in these warmer regions. When surface temperatures are higher, the distance the warm air must rise to reach colder layers above also rises. This can stop a storm before it starts, Brooks says.

 

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