‘When it rains, it pours’ is more true than ever, and we only have ourselves to blame

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By WENXIA ZHANG et al, Science. 

Summary: As climate change continues, warming of the atmosphere allows it to hold more water and thus produce more precipitation. A corollary to more rain is the amplification of precipitation variability, a behavior easier to predict than to observe. Zhang et al. used global records of daily precipitation to show that this expected increase in precipitation variability is in fact detectable in the data over the past century. This trend, which is most prominent over Europe, Australia, and eastern North America, will make adaptation more difficult for societies and ecosystems. —Jesse Smith. 

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