Climate change causing heavier rainfall across northern Europe

Climate change is causing heavier rainfall in Britain, a new study jointly carried out by several European national climate research institutes has said.

London, July 23 : Climate change is causing heavier rainfall in Britain, a new study jointly carried out by several European national climate research institutes has said.

Using supercomputer climate models, including the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office, scientists found that in recent decades, rainfall had increased over several areas of the world, including the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere.

The study found that man-made global warming was generating more intense rainstorms across parts of the northern hemisphere.

"What this does is establish for the first time that there is a distinct 'human fingerprint' in the changes in precipitation patterns - the increases in rainfall - observed in the northern hemisphere mid-latitudes, which includes Britain," said a researcher connected with the study.

"That means, it is not just the climate's natural variability which has caused the increases, but there is a detectable human cause - climate change, caused by our greenhouse gas emissions. The 'human fingerprint' has been detected before in temperature rises, but never before in rainfall. So this is very significant," he said.

The study is being published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, reports The Independent.

Incidentally, Dr Peter Stott, the study's lead scientist, had last September, published a research showing that the climate of central England had warmed by a full degree Celsius in the past 40 years, and that this could be directly linked to human causes - the first time that man-made climate change had been identified at such a local level.

ANI