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7 August 2019
More intense non-tropical storms causing increased rainfall in Southeast U.S.
A new study in AGU’s journal Geophysical Research Letters examined the region’s precipitation records from 1895 to 2018. The new research found precipitation in the Southeast during the fall increased by almost 40 percent in the past century due to an increase in average daily rainfall rather than the overall number of storms.
10 February 2017
Daily disturbance from upper atmosphere leaves its footprints on tropical rainfall
A team of scientists led by postdoctoral researcher Takatoshi Sakazaki, from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s International Pacific Research Center (IPRC), has analyzed satellite-based observations and computer model simulations of tropical rainfall variation throughout the day in an effort to determine the root cause of the temporal patterns. Their results, accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, show that daily tropical rainfall distribution is significantly shaped by heating of the upper atmosphere.
18 December 2015
A natural experiment: City in pristine Amazon shows pollution alters ecosystem
Human-made pollutants are changing cloud patterns over the Amazon, altering ecosystems in the process.
Sometimes, the best experiments come ready-made from nature. The Brazilian city of Manaus has a population of almost 2 million people and sits in the heart of an otherwise pristine stretch of Amazonian rainforest, near the place where the Negro and Solimões tributaries fuse to form the Amazon River. New research using the area as a testing ground shows that Manaus city pollutants meddle with the Amazon’s cloud cover, rain and ecosystem, according to scientists who presented the finding at the 2015 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.
Rainforests not so rainy: Cutting trees cuts rainfall
Deforestation threatens to upset the delicate water balance within the Amazon rainforest by altering not just ground cover but patterns of rainfall overhead, according to a new study.
Previous research has shown that during the dry season, areas of the Amazon cleared for cattle grazing get more rainfall than the surrounding forest. But most of this research was conducted in the 1980s, when the Amazon was deforested in small patches only a few kilometers wide, said Jaya Khanna, a researcher at Princeton University and lead author of the new study. Khanna’s is the first long-term study of the effects of deforestation on precipitation in the Amazon. Her results, presented at the 2015 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, show that rainfall patterns in cleared areas today are vastly different from those in the 1980s.
24 July 2014
Dropped cell phone calls become rain gauges in West Africa
A shaky cell phone connection during a rainstorm can be an annoying nuisance. But now scientists are showing that these weakened signals can be used to monitor rainfall in West Africa, a technique that could help cities in the region better prepare for floods and combat weather-related diseases.
GeoSpace is a blog on Earth and space science, managed by AGU’s Public Information staff. The blog features posts by AGU writers and guest contributors on all sorts of relevant science topics, but with a focus on new research and geo and space sciences-related stories that are currently in the news.