破纪录暴雨背后：气候变化的影响
China recently issued its first red alert of the year as torrential rains swept across multiple regions, causing floods, landslides, and widespread disruption. The extreme weather has prompted evacuations and a Level IV emergency response in Chongqing. While heavy rainfall is not uncommon during the East Asian monsoon season, the frequency and intensity of recent events raise a pressing question: is climate change to blame? Although no single storm can be attributed solely to global warming, a growing body of evidence suggests that rising temperatures are making such extreme rainfall more likely and more severe.
The science is relatively straightforward: a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. According to the Clausius-Clapeyron relation in physics, for every 1°C increase in temperature, the air's capacity to hold water vapor increases by about 7%. This additional moisture provides more fuel for rainstorms, leading to heavier downpours. Furthermore, climate change may be altering atmospheric circulation patterns, causing weather systems to move more slowly or stall, which can result in prolonged rainfall over the same area. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded with high confidence that human-induced warming has increased the frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events across most land regions, including East Asia.
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