The Northeast is seeing more frequent “extreme precipitation events” in line with global warming predictions, a study shows, including storms like the recent fierce rains that flooded neighborhoods and businesses across New England.
The study examined 60 years of National Weather Service rainfall records in nine Northeastern states and found that storms that produce an inch or more of rain in a day — a threshold the recent storm far surpassed — are coming more frequently.
“It’s almost like 1 inch of rainfall has become pretty common these days,” said Bill Burtis, spokesman for Clean Air-Cool Planet, a global warming education group that released the study Monday along with the University of New Hampshire’s Carbon Solutions New England group.
The study’s results are consistent with what could be expected in a world warmed by greenhouse gases, said UNH associate professor Cameron Wake. He said it would take more sophisticated studies to cement a warming link, though. “I can’t point to these recent storms and say, that is global warming,” he said. What is more certain, researchers said, is the potential economic impact should the 60-year trend continue and require billions of dollars in infrastructure improvements to things in the region including roads, bridges, sewers and culverts.
The study examined precipitation data from 219 Weather Service reporting stations in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont from 1948 to 2007.
The report found that in all but 18 of the stations, “extreme precipitation events,” defined as storms that produced at least 1 in
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