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Climate change

Human-induced rainfall changes

Nature Geoscience volume 7, pages 551–552 (2014)Cite this article

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Southwest Australia has become increasingly dry over the past century. Simulations with a high-resolution global climate model show that this trend is linked to greenhouse gas emissions and ozone depletion — and that it is likely to continue.

Reliable water resources are vital to human society. However, they can be severely affected by long-term changes in rainfall. Australia is the driest continent on the planet, apart from Antarctica, with the most variable rainfall. The southwest corner of Australia is usually slightly wetter, but has been affected by a pronounced drying trend over the past forty years. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Delworth and Zeng1 conclude, from simulations with a high-resolution global climate model, that human influences associated with increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and stratospheric ozone depletion are the most likely cause of the observed rainfall decline in the southwest of Australia. The study is one of the very few instances where regional rainfall changes have been linked to human-caused climate change.

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Figure 1: Drought in southwest Australia.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. David J. Karoly is at the School of Earth Sciences and ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia,

    David J. Karoly

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  1. David J. Karoly
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Correspondence to David J. Karoly.

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Karoly, D. Human-induced rainfall changes. Nature Geosci 7, 551–552 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2207

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