Report: Midwest Flooding More Frequent with Global Warming

Just weeks after the Bush Administration linked global warming to increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events, a National Wildlife Federation report links the Midwest flooding to climate change, and a new scientific research paper predicts heat waves will produce unprecedented high temperatures.

The reports join a growing body of research that links extreme weather like drought, flooding, heat and even tornadoes and other strong storms to climate change. Global warming, for anyone who forgets, is being caused primarily by our pollution as we burn fossil fuels.

The NWF report states that heavy rainfall events have already increased, so-called 500-year floods are occurring so frequently we've seen two in 15 years and development in floodplains is making the situation worse.

The new research uses a computer model to predict that record high temperatures will rise twice as fast as the average temperature, meaning heat waves will produce extraordinarily deadly temperatures by the end of the century, according to an Associated Press report. Think 115 degrees in Chicago, when a 106-degree high killed 600 in 1995, and you get the point.

NOAA

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