Climate change fueling summer's extreme weather
Parts of the world are lurching from drought to deluge in a summer of extreme weather "whiplash," likely goosed by human-caused climate change, scientists say. The St. Louis area and 88% of Kentucky early in July were considered "abnormally dry" and then the skies opened up and deadly flooding devastated communities. Scientists say climate change is at work in two different ways. The biggest way is simple physics: As the atmosphere warms, it holds more water. As the air warms, it soaks up more water from parched ground like a sponge, says UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain. Then when a weather system travels further, it has more water to dump, causing downpours. This will only get worse as climate change worsens. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emphasized what it called compounding weather disasters as a future threat.
