Global warming and rain

I had an optimistic thought about the effects of global warming, and I put it to the test with Dr. Meetpal Kukal, Assistant Professor, Hydrologic Science and Water Management. Today, as temperatures increase, evaporation of the oceans increase. Where does the evaporation of the ocean go? It goes into the atmosphere. And it would seem to me that due to global warming, we would see more and more precipitation because there's more water in the atmosphere. Is that reasonable to forecast? I think that is a valid argument, David. We can comfortably say that with global warming. What's happening is from a water standpoint, we are calling it an intensification of the hydrological cycle. We have a water cycle and it's intensifying. We are getting more precipitation events and we're getting more evapotranspiration. You said there will be more precipitation, and that's true for many parts of the world. But what seems to be probably more consequential is we are seeing heavier precipitation events. So we have more of that precipitation coming to us as extreme events, short duration, high intensity precipitation events, which we know are not that useful from an agricultural standpoint. The rate at which that precipitation is received at the soil surface, and the soil does not have enough time to take all that water in. So a large chunk of that water goes into non-beneficial use with things like runoff and flooding and disaster, but not good water for ag producers.