The research, conducted by experts from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the UK Meteorological Office, said that from drinking water to hydroelectric power, the amount of rainfall and the timing of its arrival will have significant impacts on society and the environment.
From simulations and projections of the most advanced climate models, the scientists found that, in an increasingly hotter world, climatologically wet regions will not only increase that quality, but also their variability, with greater differences between wet and dry conditions.
‘The amplification of rainfall versatility manifests the fact that global warming is making our climate very unequal: more extreme in both wet and dry conditions, with wide and probably faster transitions between them,’ noted ZHOU Tianjun, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and author of the study.
For these reasons, he added, about two-thirds of the Earth will face a ‘wetter and more changeable hydro-climate, while the remaining land regions will be drier, but more or less variable.
Recently, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned that droughts, storms and floods dominate the list of climatic catastrophes of the last 50 years, both in terms of human and economic losses.
pgh/abo/mgt/cdg/gdc