Extreme rainfall accompanied by deadly flooding hit the United States

Extreme rainfall accompanied by deadly flooding hit the United States and several other countries over the weekend and last week. There were several dozen fatalities in South Korea. In the U.S., flooding claimed lives in Pennsylvania, where a search is ongoing for two missing children. Flooding also struck parts of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey this past weekend. This follows last week’s relentless flooding in India, Japan, China, Turkey and the U.S. Although the destructive floods are occurring in different parts of the world, atmospheric scientists say, with climate change, storms are forming in a warmer atmosphere, making extreme rainfall a more frequent reality now. That’s because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which results in storms dumping more precipitation that can have deadly outcomes. While climate change is not the cause of storms unleashing the rainfall, these storms are forming in an atmosphere that is becoming warmer and wetter. According to NASA, the average global temperature has increased by at least 1.1 degrees Celsius (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1880.