Climate Central’s Urban Rainfall Claims Are All Wet
By
Anthony Watts
March 27, 2025
In its March 26, 2025 article titled “Heavier Rainfall Rates in U.S. Cities,” Climate Central (CC) claims that “Climate change is supercharging the water cycle, bringing heavier rainfall extremes and related flood risks across the U.S.” This conclusion is misleading at best, and scientifically irresponsible at worst. The evidence, when properly examined, points to alternative, well-known meteorological causes of localized rainfall increase.
CC claims that, “as the atmosphere warms with climate change, it can hold more water vapor, leading to heavier downpours—especially in urban areas.” This is easily explained by local urban meteorological factors unrelated to climate change.
To start, the CC article commits a common logical fallacy in climate reporting: correlation mistaken for causation. Yes, some cities have recorded increases in intense rainfall over recent decades, but that’s not the smoking gun for anthropogenic-driven climate change as CC would have you believe. Rather, Climate at a Glance provides a far more comprehensive and nuanced assessment of precipitation trends, showing that nationwide rainfall in the U.S. has not increased in an alarming or unprecedented manner. In fact, the entry on U.S. Precipitation shows that while total precipitation has slightly increased over the last century, there’s no consistent trend of intensifying rainfall that matches the hysteria being promoted.
https://climaterealism.com/2025/03/climate-centrals-misleading-urban-rainfall-claims-are-all-wet/
