THE ERA OF WEATHER EXTREMES IS UPON US: “Basically, all of your biggest storms in terms of big damage, like we just saw, in the West Coast [U.S.] states, including British Columbia, are from atmospheric river storms,” said Marty Ralph, a researcher and director at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography (November 2021)
According to Marty Ralph, despite being relatively small compared to the rest of the atmosphere, these rivers in the sky can carry up to 95 per cent of the water vapour that travels around the Earth’s surface, and can bring anywhere between 30 and 50 per cent of a given region’s yearly water supply.The warmer the air is, the more water vapour it can carry. As the atmosphere’s average temperature rises, then, an atmospheric river can grow — and when it makes landfall, it can release more rain or snow than in years past.