Study says it's likely a warmer world made deadly Dubai downpours heavier
A new report says circumstantial evidence points to climate change as worsening the deadly deluge that flooded Dubai and surroundings
Circumstantial evidence points to climate change as worsening the deadly deluge that just flooded Dubai and other parts of the Persian Gulf, but scientists didn't discover the definitive fingerprints of greenhouse gas-triggered warming they have seen in other extreme weather events, a new report found.
Between 10% and 40% more rain fell in just one day last week — killing at least two dozen people in the United Arab Emirates, Oman and parts of Saudi Arabia — than it would have in a world without the 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warming that has come from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas since the mid-19th century, scientists at World Weather Attribution said Thursday in a flash study that is too new to be peer-reviewed.
In at least one spot, a record 11 inches (28.6 centimeters) of rain fell in just 24 hours, more than twice the yearly average, paralyzing the usually bustling city of skyscrapers in a desert.
One of the key tools in WWA's more than 60 past reports has been creating computer simulations that compare an actual weather event to a fictional world without climate change, but in the Dubai case there wasn’t enough data for those simulations to make such a calculation. But analysis of decades of past observations, the other main tool they use, showed the 10% to 40% bump in rainfall amounts.
