Exploring Just How Extreme Future Storms Could Get

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https://eos.org/research-spotlights/exploring-just-how-extreme-future-storms-could-get

By Sarah Stanley, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: Storms that drop exceptionally high volumes of precipitation often cause flooding and otherwise imperil human safety, infrastructure, and ecosystems. As climate change progresses, such extreme events are likely to become even more intense and more frequent in many regions around the world. ...Gessner et al. demonstrate a novel way to combine storm simulations with statistical approaches to better estimate how extreme future precipitation events could become. ...analysis suggested that precipitation events much more intense than previously have been recorded will be possible in the near future in the region. ...estimates indicating that near-future extreme events might result in precipitation volumes that are 30%–40% higher than those seen in past events. The researchers note that even higher precipitation magnitudes cannot be ruled out. ...The researchers say the findings together suggest that the ensemble boosting and statistical approaches can complement each other well in efforts to estimate the intensity of future extreme events, providing a way to “stress test” the resilience of infrastructure and ecosystems in the face of such events. (Earth’s Future, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023EF003628, 2023)....

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