Editor's Summary

26 July 2007

The day the rains came

We have left our mark on the climate: surface air temperature, sea level pressure, free atmospheric temperature and ocean temperature have all changed during the past century as a result of human activities. Climate models suggest that human activity may have also caused changes in precipitation on a global scale, but no evidence had been found to support the prediction. Now it has. A comparison of observed changes in precipitation over land during the twentieth century with climate simulations points to a detectable influence on the latitudinal patterns of precipitation. Anthropogenic factors contributed to moistening in Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, but elsewhere, for instance in the Northern Hemisphere tropics, the effect was drying.

Letter: Detection of human influence on twentieth-century precipitation trends

Xuebin Zhang, Francis W. Zwiers, Gabriele C. Hegerl, F. Hugo Lambert, Nathan P. Gillett, Susan Solomon, Peter A. Stott & Toru Nozawa

doi:10.1038/nature06025

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