Climate change has helped feed the heavy rains that led to a devastating flood of Texas

Officials report more than 100 deaths, including children and camp advisers.

By Arcelia Martin for Inside Climate News

Strong rains last weekend which pushed the Guadalupe river in the country of the Texas hill at its highest height ever recorded had resulted on Tuesday more than 100 reported deaths, including 27 children and advisers of the Mystic camp. But while the research and rescue teams and the volunteers sweep the banks of the river for the missing people, the number of confirmed deaths should grow.

The climatologists said that the torrential showers of July 4 illustrate the devastating results of the weather intended by a warming atmosphere. These disasters, they said, will become more frequent as people around the world continue to burn fossil fuels and heat the planet.

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“It’s no longer a single-off,” said Claudia Benitez-Geneston, climatologist at the University of South Carolina. Extreme precipitation events increase through the United States as temperatures increase, she said.

The warmer temperatures allow the atmosphere to contain more water vapor, producing heavier precipitation, said and other climatologists. This coupled with the old infrastructure and ineffective warning systems can be disastrous.

“It is established that the greenhouse gas emissions induced by humans have led to an increased frequency and / or intensity of certain times and extreme climatic climatics since the pre-industrial time, in particular for extreme temperatures”, the intergovernmental panel of the United Nations on climate change Reported in 2021. “On a global scale, the intensification of heavy precipitation will follow the rate of increase in the maximum quantity of humidity that the atmosphere can hold because it warms approximately 7% for 1 ° C of global warming.”

The fifth national assessment of the US government climate, published in November 2023, says that “the number of days with extreme precipitation will continue to increase as the climate warms up” and that “these changes in precipitation schemes can lead to an increase in flood risks, an impact on infrastructure, ecosystems and communities”.

The center of Texas is sadly famous for its sudden floods and its arid soil, a rigged soil in which water does not infiltrate easily. Thus, when the rain touches the soil, it leaves the hilly terrain of the region and canyons and accumulates quickly in streams and rivers, crushing them, increasing them quickly.

The sudden flood was not the result of a full-resistant storm, said Beniteznezne, but a rest of a tropical storm. “For me, it’s really sad and deeply alarming,” said Benitez-Newson. “Climate change transforms ordinary times into these disasters.”

The wet remains of the tropical storm Barry have mounted from eastern Mexico while the wet air was also moving north of the southwest coast of Mexico, blocking the country of the Texas hill. Hot air in the low and high levels of the atmosphere is a recipe for intense precipitation, says John Nielsen-Gammon, the state-named state climatologist for over 20 years.

He and his colleagues have compiled a list of all the precipitation events in Texas which produced more than 20 inches of rain a few years ago. A common characteristic that climatologists found was when the wind blew from south to north, or when the humidity was brought north of the tropics, he said. “This implements the possibility of very strong precipitation,” said Nielsen-Gammon. He concluded in a report last year This extreme rain in Texas could increase by 10% by 2036.

The increased humidity of the tropics is driven by the warming of the oceans.

The oceans absorb more than 90% of excess heat in the atmosphere produced by greenhouse gas emissions, Reheat the ocean temperatures at depths of 2,000 meters. Tropical storms gain heat and evaporate more quickly to higher temperatures, adding more water vapor to the atmosphere, Nielsen-Gammon said.

A study published Monday by Climmemeter, a project funded by the European Union and the French National Center for Scientific Research, revealed that the weather conditions leading to Friday morning floods were warmer and 7% more humid than similar events in the past. Natural variability alone cannot explain the rain changes associated with exceptional time, according to the report, and indicates climate change caused by humans as one of the main engines of the event.

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The climmeter analysis shows the difference in surface temperature, precipitation and wind speed between the current climate of 1987 and previous decades, from 1950 to 1986.

“Climate change loads dice towards more frequent and intense floods,” said Davide Faranda, one of the authors of the report who is research director of climate physics in the Laboratory of climate and environmental science, part of the French national center for scientific research. “The sudden flood that torn the Mystic camp at night, when people were the most vulnerable, shows the deadly cost of the underestimation of this quarter of work.”

He added: “An increase of 7% of the rain is a lot, but does not really make the tragedy. If you have a good alert system, if the population knows the risk linked to climate change for these weather phenomena and you can take them into account, not minimize them, then you can save lives, because it is not double the amount of precipitation, it is not three times.

Other factors in the number of floods such as the change of land use, urban sprawl and the defaults of the alert system have not been analyzed and may have amplified disaster, depending on the report.

“We are in a more extreme climate,” said Faranda. “And every year, year after year, we make it more extreme by burning more fossil fuels. … These extremes are now starting to touch the limits of what is normal life on this planet, in terms of humans, in terms of infrastructure that we have built with the old climate, in terms of the resilience of the ecosystem.”

The first estimates of damage and economic loss of this disaster will reach beyond $ 18 billion, according to Accuweather.

The writer Bob Berwyn contributed to this report.