In Texas, cutting-edge weather forecasts hit their limits as Trump budget cuts loom
Currently, the best available tools can provide many warnings with a general threat of sudden flood, but the subdivided localized floods can only be predicted when the radar and real -time sensors are capable of determining precipitation rates.
“The reality is for sudden floods in areas subject to floods, you should think about it in the same way as you do a tornado,” said Gerard. “We cannot tell you that your particular place will be affected in the same way that we cannot tell you that your particular place will be touched by a tornado.”
Scientists expect more intense precipitation events, as human use of fossil fuels warms the atmosphere, which makes the quality of the weather models even more important.
For each degree of warming in Fahrenheit, the atmosphere can contain about 3% to 4% more humidity. Global temperatures in 2024 were around 2.32 degrees higher than the average of the 20th century, according to the NOAA data.
“The rain occurs when you have a really humid air plot on the surface and it rises in the atmosphere and which it cools … Think of a sponge full of water and you start to tighten, by sponging the sponge and that the water falls,” said Andrew Dessler, air conditioner of the Texas A&M University. “In a warmer atmosphere, there is more water in the sponge, so when you reach it, you get more water falling.”
Although climate change increases the chances of extreme precipitation, it should not have any effects on the precision of weather models because they rely on real-time and basic and underlying physics that govern the interactions between all kinds of materials. The laws of physics are impermeable to climate change.
“They use input data that contain climate change,” said Drawing. “It is incorporated.”
In Texas, higher temperatures have already translated by more intense precipitation. In a 2024 report, Nielsen-Gammon noted that “extreme precipitation of one day” had increased from 5% to 15% since the end of the 20th century. By 2036, he expected an additional increase of approximately 10% of extreme intensity of precipitation.
