Atmospheric CO2 concentration (Ca) is rising, predicted to cause global warming, and alter precipitation patterns.
Across the globe, rising temperatures and altered precipitation patterns have caused persistent regional droughts, lengthened fire seasons, and increased the number of weather-driven extreme fire events.
Climate change is likely to accelerate desertification (thus reducing arable land in certain areas), alter precipitation patterns, generate extreme weather events, and produce harsher and longer drought cycles.
These processes alter precipitation patterns on land, bringing more moisture to some areas and diminishing it in others.
For example, plant transpiration is likely to decrease under elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration, which often leads to increased moisture in soils and overlying litter (Johnson et al. 2003); warming temperatures and altered precipitation patterns will further impact moisture in soil and plant litter layers.
Even communities far inland will be threatened as climate change brings more heat waves and alters precipitation patterns, driving up the risk of both droughts and extreme flooding.
ENSO is known to affect global climate and weather conditions by primarily altering the precipitation patterns in the tropics.
Climate-change projections suggest altered precipitation, temperature, and hydrological patterns for the near future.
Worse yet, in the Fifth IPCC Report, Barros et al. (2014) predicts that this water-limited region will experience a warming trend significantly higher than the global mean, which would alter summer and winter precipitation patterns and increase the frequency of extreme climate events with longer, more intense, and more frequent summer heat waves.
Its Web site says that climate change is expected to raise sea levels and alter precipitation trends.
