A new study just released by Environment America documents the increase in extreme precipitation events. The group examined rainfall records for 3,000 U.S. weather stations from the past 60 years and found a 24 percent increase. "We find that storms with extreme amounts of rain or snowfall are happening more often across most of America, consistent with the predicted impact of global warming."

The Northwest storms send another global warming alert, for they tie in to the single largest regional climate impact, snowpack loss. Climate scenarios project dramatic losses of mountain snowpack, ranging above 50 percent by mid-century. This will stress municipal water supplies, hydroelectric production, irrigated agriculture, river barging and salmon runs. This is because, even though greater autumn and winter precipitation is projected, more will fall as rain and less as snow.

Sometimes this will erode existing snowpack, as it did this week. The storms were a rain-on-snow event, the source of the greatest Northwest floods -- from the 1948 flooding that destroyed the city of Vanport on the Columbia, to the mid-1990s floods, to this week's inundation.

Climate Solutions reported on regional climate change impacts scenarios in our 1999 paper, "In Hot Water." Unfortunately, the scenarios seem to be increasingly the reality of the local news. Climate change is moving far faster than human systems, especially our political system. We move slowly to respond even as we are swamped by the consequences of our climate pollution.

Flooded communities and a closed freeway underscore that climate disruption translates into economic disruption. Global warming will make a mess of us if we don't deal with it in a serious way now, and that means commencing immediate and deep cuts in fossil fuel pollution. That means now.

Posted from Climate Solutions Journal.