Not Your Expected Climate Impact: Arizona Flooded by a Tropical Storm

As Tropical Storm Rosa rolls through Arizona, dousing desert towns with heavy rains and filling reservoirs nearly depleted by a lengthy drought, the storm’s arrival is also a message from the sky about the impact of climate change: it can produce weird weather that in ancient times might have been attributed to angry gods.

Satellite images show then-Hurricane Rosa churning toward
 Mexico's Baja California and scientists say climate change
is a big reason storms are taking unusual paths.

Now, however, the unusual sight of flooded streets in Arizona can be explained by science.

“There’s a climate change component to it and we can say that with confidence,” said Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Global warming has raised ocean temperatures and warmed the air above it, supercharging storms with moisture that they unleash in bigger rainfalls. Researchers now have enough data to connect the dots between increasing greenhouse gas emissions, greater moisture in the air and outsized rainstorms, Trenberth said.

Read the Climate Liability News story by Ucilia Wang - “Not Your Expected Climate Impact: Arizona Flooded by a Tropical Storm.”

Enter halophytes - using saltwater in agriculture

Ever since ancient times, the sowing of salt has been synonymous with severe and deadly retribution. The Roman general Scipio Africanus the Younger was said to have ended the Third Punic War in 146BC by razing Carthage, enslaving its population and spreading salt on its fields. In the biblical book of Judges (9:45), the brutal and unprincipled King Abimelech laid siege to the Canaanite city of Shechem. ‘He took the city,’ the biblical story says, ‘and slew the people that was therein, and beat down the city, and sowed it with salt.’

Salt kills most plants. In fact, it attacks them in much the same way that carbon monoxide kills humans. In cases of carbon monoxide poisoning, CO molecules exhaust the carrying capacity of your red blood cells, depriving your body of the oxygen it needs. Likewise, most terrestrial plants soak up the sodium ions and sodium chloride from salt much faster than they can absorb essential nutrients such as potassium, calcium and magnesium. Without those nutrients, they perish. Spread salt on the fields of your enemies and their crops will fail.

Read the Aeon story by Mark Anderson - “Enter halophytes”