A census of hundreds of slow-moving landslides in Northern California reveals an uptick in the number and speed of landslides in 2017, the second-wettest year on record.
precipitation
Posted inNews
Congo Rain Forest Endures a Longer Dry Season
The forest’s dry season has been starting earlier and ending later for decades, making parts of it vulnerable to incursions by drought-resistant ecosystems.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
One Step Closer to a Milestone in Climate Modeling
A pair of revisions to the Energy Exascale Earth System Model improves its ability to capture late afternoon and nocturnal rainfall as well as the timing and movement of convection.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Extreme Precipitation Expected to Increase with Warming Planet
A new analysis indicates that the frequency and magnitude of extreme precipitation events are expected to increase as Earth continues to warm.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
If Precipitation Extremes Are Increasing, Why Aren’t Floods?
Improving our understanding of the relationship between changes in precipitation and flooding due to rising temperature is a new grand challenge for the scientific community, argue the authors of a recent commentary.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Precipitation in the Tropics: A New View
The first study to simultaneously investigate precipitation and cloud structures in tropical weather systems concludes observation systems significantly overestimate the height of raining clouds.
Posted inNews
Microbes Rain Down from Above, to the Tune of the Seasons
Every time snow or rain falls, it brings with it microbes from high in the atmosphere. Could those microbes have a seasonal signal, just like the plants on the land below?
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Diurnal Variation of Rainfall over the Equator Revisited
Radar data show an afternoon precipitation maximum in the equatorial Indian Ocean in addition to the nocturnal maximum; this occurs under light surface winds and suppressed large-scale convection.
Posted inNews
How Old Is the Mekong River Valley?
Granite samples collected from the Mekong River Valley reveal that the river’s path was incised roughly 17 million years ago, most likely by increased erosion from monsoon precipitation.
Posted inNews
Landslide Database Reveals Uptick in Human-Caused Fatal Slides
Records of nearly 5,000 landslides around the world show that human activities like construction, illegal mining, and hill cutting are increasingly responsible for fatal slides, particularly in Asia.