Researchers find mechanism that ties human-caused air pollution to catastrophic floods in southwest China
Thursday, July 9, 2015 - 05:30
in Earth & Climate
Following the trail of the 2013 Sichuan flood in southwest China, researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and their collaborators found that heavy human-caused air pollution over the Sichuan Basin just upwind contributed to the catastrophic flood. Through a series of events they call "aerosol-enhanced conditional instability," tiny particles from heavy air pollution absorb heat from the sun, stabilize the atmosphere, and suppress local storms during the daytime. However, this allows the heavy moist and now warm air to be transported downwind to mountainous areas where it is lifted causing extreme nighttime precipitation. The research was published in Geophysical Research Letters and highlighted by Nature.