Would more rain be bad for us?

Below is an academic journal abstract preceded by a popular summary of it. It makes a point that I often make but which Greenies sedulously ignore: That warming would INCREASE rainfall overall -- which is of course great for crops. The idea that increased rainfall is a problem is laughable. I grew up in the tropics, where we measured our annual rainfall not in inches but in yards. And the rain was so heavy we used to say that it came down "in sheets". All that rain was slightly pesky at times (good for raincoat sales!) but the environment sure was lush and all the crops grew like mad. We had fields of grass that was over 6' high. And the grass concerned (sugar cane) was and is the world's cheapest source of sugar and ethanol. Heavier rain would be GREAT!

And India and much of Asia have lived with monsoonal rain (seasonal tempests) for millennia. They seem to have survived somehow. People actually welcome the monsoon there, funnily enough

The slim point that the Greenies have is that rainfall PATTERNS would change. Most areas would become wetter but some will become drier. But in large countries such as Australia, China, the USA, Russia and Canada, that would lead only to slightly different patterns of internal trade. Small countries would change their international trading patterns. Overall, food should become cheaper for everyone. Normal people would celebrate that but the Greenies hate it, of course.

The article below is in fact little more than a boring confirmation of basic precipitation physics. Amusingly, however, it once again finds that reality does not fit the Warmist models!

Global warming is expected to have a large effect on the amount and distribution of precipitation, with wet areas projected to become wetter and dry areas drier, and an overall increase in total rainfall. Another important aspect of these predicted changes is the frequency of extreme rainfall events, because the impact of a few heavy rain events is very different from that of many more moderate ones. Allan and Soden (p. 1481, published online 7 August) use satellite observations and model simulations to evaluate how climate warming is affecting the frequency and strength of rain events. Heavy rains are occurring with increasing frequency when it is warm and less often when it is cold, and these extremes are happening more frequently than models have suggested they should. This implies that the impacts of precipitation changes due to global warming could be greater than have been assumed.

Source

Atmospheric Warming and the Amplification of Precipitation Extremes

By Richard P. Allan and Brian J. Soden

Climate models suggest that extreme precipitation events will become more common in an anthropogenically warmed climate. However, observational limitations have hindered a direct evaluation of model-projected changes in extreme precipitation. We used satellite observations and model simulations to examine the response of tropical precipitation events to naturally driven changes in surface temperature and atmospheric moisture content. These observations reveal a distinct link between rainfall extremes and temperature, with heavy rain events increasing during warm periods and decreasing during cold periods. Furthermore, the observed amplification of rainfall extremes is found to be larger than that predicted by models, implying that projections of future changes in rainfall extremes in response to anthropogenic global warming may be underestimated.

Source

Posted by John Ray.