Destructive winds that flow out of thunderstorms in the central United States are becoming more widespread with warming temperatures, according to new research by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
The new study, published this week in Nature Climate Change, shows that the central U.S. experienced a fivefold increase in the geographic area affected by damaging thunderstorm straight line winds in the past 40 years. The research uses a combination of meteorological observations, very high-resolution computer modeling, and analyses of fundamental physical laws to estimate the changes in the winds, which are so short-lived and localized that they often are not picked up by weather stations.
The work was funded by NSF, which is NCAR’s sponsor, and by the MIT Climate Grand Challenge on Weather and Climate Extremes.
Read more at National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
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