Australia Faces Stormy Future as Temperatures Soar

By Tim Radford, Climate News Network


LONDON—New research into storm patterns warns that flash floods are likely to sweep across the Australian landscape with increasing intensity, particularly in urban or residential areas.

Peak rainfall is predicted to soar with rising surface temperatures as the world’s largest island—and also its smallest continent—experiences ever greater extremes of heat.

Civil engineers from the Water Research Centre at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) report in Nature Geoscience that they looked at 40,000 storms across the whole of the continent over the last 30 years and identified a pattern that warmer temperatures are linked to disruptive rainfall events.

“Our results were consistent across all the climate zones in Australia, regardless of season or storm type, without exception,” says Professor Ashish Sharma, one of the study’s authors.

Unexpected finding

“This was an unexpected finding, and it supports our hypothesis that increasing temperatures are changing rainfall patterns. It means that most people in Australia can expect to see intensification in the magnitude of flash flooding in smaller catchments, particularly in urban or residential areas.” ...............(more)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/australia_faces_stormy_future_as_temperatures_soar_20150614