Actually, there has been an increase in water vapor in the surface atmosphere over land and ocean since the 1970s. Warmer air temperatures produce more evaporation, leading to a wetter atmosphere, which increases rain or snow totals.
"Non-real" climate events are increasingly real, as you have no doubt noticed.
Navajo dunes
Climate change is shifting the sand dunes on the reservation. A 2011 study of the Navajo Nation’s sand dunes shows that in the southwestern corner of the reservation, dunes are moving about 115 feet per year.
Sand dunes are normally stabilized by vegetation, but much of that vegetation has died amid the drought, allowing the dunes to spread, and jeopardizing the rangeland and even homes. Some people in the southwest quadrant of the Navajo Nation may be forced to relocate because of encroaching sand dunes, according to new research.
Heat kills 1,800 in India
In some regions temperatures have reached 122°F, so hot that it has melted sections of the asphalt roads. Parts of the country may have had slightly lower temperatures, but the heat is exacerbated by high humidity. In Lucknow, the capital city of Uttar Pradesh, temperatures reached 110.3°F, with relative humidity of 70 percent. Delhi announced that it had reached its hottest temperature of the season of 113°F.
Good-bye Maldives
Good-bye Kiribati, good-bye Bangladesh.
At the climate conference in Warsaw, speaking of his country's cyclone, Philippines Commissioner Yeb Saño made a passionate plea for action, saying: "What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness."
Pollen explosion
The reason tree pollen showers are so intense right now, experts say, is because of this year's wet, cold winter. Normally the tree pollen starts at the end of winter or the beginning of spring and then the grass pollen comes in May. Now it's been delayed, and we're getting all the pollen at once, instead of getting it slowly like most years.
Migrants
Migrations do not always happen because it's too hot for people to live. Often it is because the once-productive farms become uneconomical to work. High heat wipes out the farming economy, causing men to pack up and leave for greener pastures. The failure of farms and the exodus that follows ripple through the economy as people stop buying and start leaving.
In Africa, the migrations may have less to do with drought than the strategies for seizing land from those born on it. First, the price of agricultural necessities and of food are driven artificially high so that only the rich can afford to eat. The rest are forced to watch their children suffer until they will sell their land for nearly nothing just to buy a bit of food. Once that food is gone, the families are forced to walk miles away to feeding stations run by outsiders and the land their ancestors farmed is taken over by agribusiness interests to profit the rich.
Meanwhile in Texas
At least 24 people have been killed in the storms, with at least 11 still missing. More than 7 inches fell overnight from a line of thunderstorms that stalled over Dallas, which is in its wettest month ever recorded at 16.07 inches. The National Weather Service reports that rainfall records have been broken in Texas, from Corpus Christi along the Gulf of Mexico, to Gainesville near the Oklahoma border.
This comes on the heels of record setting droughts. Again we have extreme variation in weather, a typical consequence of climate change.
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