The climate crisis is driving more intense flooding. Here's how.
Kentucky was one of several states, including Missouri and Arizona, that experienced severe flooding this week amid increasingly extreme weather events that are amplified by the climate crisis.
In St. Louis, record-breaking rainfall at the beginning of the week triggered dangerous flash floods that have continued for days and left at least one person dead.
As global temperatures climb, the atmosphere is able to hold more and more water, making water vapor more abundantly available to fall as rain.
Rainfall over land has become more intense since the 1980s, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report’s authors say human influence is the main driver.
Human-caused fossil fuel emissions have warmed the planet a little more than 1 degree Celsius, on average, with more intense warming over land areas. Scientists are increasingly confident in the role that the climate crisis plays in extreme weather, and have warned that these events will become more intense and more dangerous with every fraction of a degree of warming.