SIHSECCN

Joelle Gergis ARC DECRA Climate Research Fellow, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne

"A rapidly warming climate means that storms are now occurring in a “super-charged” atmosphere. As temperatures increase, so does the water-holding capacity of the lower atmosphere. The oceans are also warming, especially at the surface, driving up evaporation rates. Global average surface temperature has already risen by about 1℃ above pre-industrial levels, leading to an increase of 7% in the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere."

I have actually been blogging for several years now about this stuff and it basically stands to reason that a warmer atmosphere will have more water vapour. The 7% rise per mean degree Celsius rise cited here is surprisingly large, but then I am not a meteorologist. If the water vapour component rises it then is only a question of if, when and where extra rain will fall.

Global warming is cited as mean degree Celsius rise in surface ocean temperature. People who have studied mathematics at all will recall that the 'arithmetic mean' (called an average by non-mathematical people) is a measure of central tendency. As such, by definition, in a data set of temperature measurements at different geographical locations, data points  will adopt the normal distribution bell curve centred on this mean. Therefore, an equal number of data points will be above as below this mean value.

A consequence of this is that there will be geographical locations which become wetter, as our self-induced human-species-existential-climate-change nightmare (SIHSECCN) unfolds, and also those which become drier. For the wetter/drier dichotomy one can substitute hotter/colder.

So an element of luck is introduced to the universe of human suffering. If you are lucky you will occupy land which gets cooler, but as mean global temperatures continue to rise these spots will comprise half of the land area. it's a poisoned chalice anyway because those who occupy the cooler spots will be conquered and/or subjugated by those who occupy the hotter regions.

Australia was once called the lucky country in a tongue-in-cheek book title. Now we will see how tongue-in-cheek this actually was.

As an afterthought: since we are forced live a cutthroat neoliberal existence, where are all the budding little entrepreneurs damming the floodwaters and selling the extra water back into the market? Probably the same place as the ones paving the deserts with solar panels and selling pristine electricity to the general population. In the future.