Winter storm rainfall ‘made 20% heavier by climate change’
human-induced climate change had led to the average rainfall on stormy days becoming around 20% heavier.
It said the kind of intense storm rainfall seen in 2023/2024 had become 10 times more likely.
Where it would have occurred about once every 50 years in the pre-industrial period, in today’s world, similarly intense storm rainfall was expected to occur around every five years.
The study also looked at the total rainfall for October to March, which was the second wettest such period on record for the UK and the third wettest for Ireland, and found climate change had increased rainfall over the season by 6% to 25%.
The wet conditions seen in 2023/2024 would have occurred every 80 years at most in the cooler, pre-industrial era, but were now considered to be four times more likely, occurring about once every 20 years. If temperatures rose further to 2C of warming, storm rainfall and seasonal rain would increase, the researchers said.
A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapour, a key factor in climate change driving heavier rainfall.
But the “storminess” of the storms showed a decreasing trend in this study, highlighting that more research was needed on how climate change might influence the severity and frequency of windstorms in northern Europe, the researchers said.
Sarah Kew, researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, warned that the UK and Ireland “face a wetter, damper and mouldier future due to climate change”.
She said: “While the influence of climate change on strong storm winds is less clear, autumn and winter rainfall has become much heavier, bringing more damaging and sometimes deadly floods to urban