Rivers in the Sky Are Flooding The World With Tropical Waters: When mid-latitude storms tap into the great stores of moisture in the tropical atmosphere, the rain pours and pours, rivers rise, the land slides, and locusts can swarm

摘要

Call them tropical plumes, atmospheric rivers, Hawaiian fire hoses, or Pineapple Expresses. Whatever the label, meteorologists are now recognizing the extent to which these streams of steamy tropical air transport vast amounts of moisture across the globe, often leaving natural disasters in their wake. When a classic atmospheric river tapped tropical moisture to dump a meter of rain onto southern California in January 2005, it triggered the massive La Conchita mudslide that killed 10 people. Torrential rains fed by an atmospheric river inundated the U.S. East Coast last month, meteorologists say, and researchers recently showed that atmospheric rivers can flood places such as northwest Africa as well, with equally dramatic effects.