Evidence, the 3 year amount of rain that fell in 1 day in Oman supports the hypothesis that the amounts of extreme precipitation will increase due to the larger capacity of warmer air to hold moisture.
Crikey! Any increase in rainfall in arid regions should be welcomed. However, the devastation caused by storms, the destruction of lives and property, should be addressed.
I guess I'll have to repeat the same points I've made previously on this issue of extreme weather events.
I live in Australia, which is well known as 'the land of floods and droughts', so I'm familiar with the way the media reports on every major flood or drought as being the worst on record, and is presented as evidence to support the negative consequences of man-made global warming.
I suspect that most people will just accept what the media presents, possibly because they don't have the time, and in some cases the nous and curiosity, to do their own investigation.
This current storm and flooding in Oman is a typical example of the problem of the unscientific attribution of a particular storm to 'man-made' global warming, and the unscientific use of the event to support the argument that floods and droughts are getting worse, globally.
Because I'm curious and unbiased, and place great importance on substantiated facts, I've just done an internet search of the recorded history of storms and flooding in the Oman region.
Wikipedia has addressed the issue. What might appear to be the worst storm in the Oman general area occurred on June 6th 2007. However, there was also a major storm in 1890 which resulted in 757 deaths. Who knows how devastating the storms were that occurred before this record that does not go earlier than 1881.
"The 1890 Storm
After entering the Gulf of Oman, a cyclone struck Sohar in northeastern Oman after passing just northeast of Muscat, where it washed ships ashore. There, the storm dropped 286 mm (11.3 in) of rainfall over 24 hours, the highest daily precipitation total in the nation's history. High winds wrecked many houses, and about 50 people died in Muscat and nearby Muttrah. Inland flooding downed thousands of date palm trees and inundated valleys. Nationally, the storm killed at least 757 people."But what is very revealing, is the regularity of storms in this area, from 1881 to the present. The obvious question is, why have people not secured themselves against the almost certain repetition of previous storms?
If a storm blows down palm trees which flatten your house, then a very obvious lesson should be learned. Don't plant palm trees within falling distance of your house.
If your roof blows off, without the effect of falling palm trees, then make sure you have a strengthened roof that can resist the force of previous storms in your area.
The following Wikipedia article lists about 60 storm events in the Oman region from 1881 to the present. That's an average of one storm every 2 to 3 years, although not all of them were devastating of course.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arabian_Peninsula_tropical_cyclones#Pre-1900Increasing rainfall plus increasing CO2 levels should help to provide food security for the increasing population of mankind, and help the growth of newly planted forests to increase biodiversity and perhaps even stabilize the climate in certain areas.
The real tragedy is that we don't seem to have the political nous and commonsense to capitalize and exploit the benefits of rising CO2 levels, a warmer climate, and increased rainfall, and use our energy resources to protect our citizens from the recurrence of the known extreme weather events that have occurred regularly in the past.
