Weather & Science
Why More Intense Bursts of Rain Are Making the Planet Drier
Land can’t absorb all the water from strong, sporadic storms, leaving much of it to evaporate. That’s happening at a global scale, according to new research.
An uncovered sandbar due to low water levels of the Mississippi River in Greenville, Mississippi, in 2022.
Photographer: Rory Doyle/BloombergClimate researchers have long documented something about a warmer world that’s hard even for non-scientists to miss: It doesn’t rain, it pours.
Intense, concentrated rainstorms have been on the rise for decades. And those bigger storms turn out to have a counterintuitive effect. The more that rain comes down in deluges, the less water is available on land, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.