T he world’s wettest rainstorms produce about half of the global annual rainfall. Now a study shows that these intense downpours have become shorter in duration and fewer in number, compressing the same amount of rain into quicker and more extreme events, with implications for flood and drought risk. Chiyuan Miao and colleagues from Beijing Normal University in China analysed daily measurements between 1980 and 2022 from more than 19,000 rain gauges around the world.
They found that an average of about half of the world’s rainfall fell during about nine multi-day storms, delivered over a cumulative time of about 28 days. But they also found that since 1980 the average length of an intense storm has reduced by about 86 minutes a decade, cutting the overall time to deliver half of the world’s annual rainfall by just over 9.5 hours. The findings, published in Earth’s Future , show these changes are happening across all continents but with regional differences.
Europe and South America have recorded the strongest rate of compression of storms, with the wettest shortening by as much as 144 minutes a decade. Implications will also vary between regions and include changes to drought risk, flash flooding, water security, farm productivity, soil erosion and wildfire susceptibility. Explore more on these topics Climate crisis Weatherwatch Flooding Drought Extreme weather Water news Share Reuse this content
The Guardian reports a Beijing Normal University study finding that the world's wettest rainstorms are packing the same rain into shorter, more extreme bursts. It lists the flood and drought risks this brings but never tells the reader that global heating is making heavy rainfall more intense. A reader learns that the change is happening without learning why.
Leaves out the climate link
Serious
“compressing the same amount of rain into quicker and more extreme events”
Why this matters
The words "quicker and more extreme events" report that intense downpours are getting more extreme. Neither this sentence nor any other in the body gives a cause.
The impression it gives
A reader comes away knowing that the heaviest rainstorms are becoming more extreme, with no idea whether human activity has anything to do with it. It could read as an unexplained shift in the weather.
The context
Human-caused warming has made heavy rainfall more frequent and more intense. The article never says so. Its body has no word on warming, heating, emissions or greenhouse gases. The only mention of climate is a topic tag at the foot of the page. One line such as "global heating is making downpours like these more intense" would have given the reader the cause.
How we know
Checked against the whole articleIt never uses the words “warming”, “heating”, “emissions” and “greenhouse”.
On the recordThat warming has made hot extremes, heavy rainfall, agricultural and ecological drought, fire weather and intense tropical cyclones more frequent or more severe.ipcc.ch (opens in a new tab)
A study shows the world's wettest rainstorms are packing the same rain into shorter, more extreme bursts. Global heating is making heavy rainfall like this more intense, which raises the risk of flash floods and drought.