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NEW ANALYSIS HAS revealed global patterns of extreme rainfall, which could lead to better forecasts and more accurate climate models.
Extreme rainfall – defined as the top five percent of rainy days – often forms a pattern at the local level, for example, tracking across Europe.
However, new research, published in the Nature journal, has revealed that there are also larger-scale global patterns to extreme rainfall events.
These patterns connect through the atmosphere rather than over land – for example, extreme rainfall in Europe can precede extreme rainfall in India by around five days, without extreme rain in the countries in between.
The research could help better predict when and where extreme rainfall events will occur around the world, according to the researchers. The insights could be used to test and improve global climate models, leading to better predictions.
The study was led by a team at Imperial College London and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
This research also provides a “baseline” for climate change studies, according to the authors. By knowing how the atmosphere behaves to create patterns of extreme weather rainfall events, scientists will be able to gain new insights into changes that may be caused by global warming.
“Uncovering this global pattern of connections in the data can improve weather and climate models,” lead author Dr Niklas Boers said.
This is especially true for the emerging picture of couplings between the tropics and the European and North American regions and their consequences for extreme rainfall, the authors noted.
“This finding could also help us understand the connections between different monsoon systems and extreme events within them. I hope that our results will, in the long term, help to predict extreme rainfall and associated flash floods and landslides in northeast Pakistan, north India and Nepal,” Boers said.
“There have been several hazards in recent years, with devastating consequences in these regions, such as the 2010 Pakistan flood.”
The research
To find patterns in extreme rainfall events, the team developed a new method rooted in complex system theory to study high-resolution satellite data of rainfall. The data comes from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission.
By breaking the globe into a grid, the team could see where events happened and determine how “synchronous” they were – a statistical measure that assesses connections even if the events did not happen at exactly the same time.
The results from this “complex network” model, analysed using our understanding of the motion of the atmosphere, revealed a possible mechanism for how the events were connected.
The patterns appear to be created by Rossby wave – wiggles in fast-flowing currents of air high in the atmosphere, known as the jet streams, the authors noted.
Rossby waves have been connected by regular rainfall, but this study is the first to connect them to extreme rainfall event patterns.
Co-author Professor Brian Hoskins said: “This new technique applied to satellite data shows very surprising relationships between extreme rainfall events in different regions around the world.
For example, extreme events in the South Asian summer monsoon are, on average, linked to events in the East Asian, African, European and North American regions.
Although rains in Europe do not cause the rain in Pakistan and India, they belong to the same atmospheric wave pattern, with the European rains being triggered first.
“This should provide a strong test for weather and climate models and gives promise of better predictions.”
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And Andre Agassi had an obsessive father who made him bat at balls when he was still in his pram, then when he was 7 had a machine fire 1000 balls a day at him to return. It was all down to practice.
Except that Agassi has an elder brother who got exactly the same treatment but never won anything. You can bias a sample to prove anything you like.
True in most cases, but Mozart was no normal kid who just practiced a lot and happened to be surrounded by music , he was a prodigy.
A child is defined as a prodigy based on what they do, not on what they might do. We regularly confuse the attributes of talent, skill, knowledge and intellect. Ultimately none of these will deliver achievement without coaching/education, practice and commitment.
Agreed ben, though I’d add having an interest as an alternative to commitment, as the former drives the later in many cases.
But where talent comes in, is that some folk deliver with far less of that coaching, practice and commitment. Some people catch on to certain things far quicker, and see the big picture – and that in its own right is talent. In the same way that the best sportspeople read a game and execute a plan (with flair to back it up), so to does natural talent in the workplace spot problems before they happen, troubleshoot as they happen, or clean up efficiently after things have happened.
Certain things aren’t taught, and that’s why we speak about leaders, in every context of life.
Talent has to be there in the first place….without it practice is useless
This whole thing is a bit misleading! For most athletes they are genetically superior to your average person! A business leader I could believe but the reason top pros make it in their sport is because they stood out from the field from a very very young age! Hard work will cover some gaps but you need a certain physical structure in the first place!
Ted, look at the YouTube video I posted. You’ll change your mind! Talent, though VIP, is only one factor. Environment, access, peer influence, coaching (education) and opportunity are essential parts of the mix.
This is bullshit, the Kalenjin tribe has physical attributes that suit them to distance running. The Sports Gene gives an interesting, fact based insight into this.
Eh some people are just lucky ba$tards in life.
People can be unlucky but most successful people make their luck. They were in the gym at 6 and/or the office at 7 and do it for life!
True Story
The more you practice the luckier you get
Listen to the man and get proper insight rather than read ill informed comments. Essentially talent is only part of the requirements for success and he believes it is wrong and damaging to young people to peddle the myth that talent is the only requirement.
“it is wrong and damaging to young people to peddle the myth that talent is the only requirement.”
In that case, it’s a happy coincidence that nobody is peddling that myth.
Someone is, on the other hand, peddling a book – to people who want to hear that there’s a path to success for everyone, regardless of their aptitude.
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