NASA research confirms floods and droughts worsened by global warming

A NASA study confirms it: floods and droughts aggravated by the global warming of the last decades. In particular, in the research published in Nature Water, the periods when there are temperatures above average would be increasing both in duration and intensity, with a greater impact on Earth than in the past. According to the study’s author, Matthew Rodell, there is “indisputable” evidence that temperatures are exacerbating extreme events such as floods and droughts.

The scientists analysed 1,056 extreme events which occurred between 2002 and 2021, using observations from NASA’s GRACE and GRACE-FO satellites. These instruments detect subtle variations in the Earth’s gravitational field, which are then used to measure water storage, including groundwater, soil moisture, snow, ice and surface water, on land.

While climate models have fluctuated, the team discovered that warmer global temperatures had a greater influence than in the past. Scientists have found that extreme drought and flood events have increased since 2002, but that they have occurred more often since 2015, when we started to record record annual temperatures on Earth. They will undoubtedly occur more and more often in the near future.

References: NASA