‘Rivers’ in the sky likely to drench East Asia under climate change

Extreme rainfall events associated with atmospheric rivers, narrow bands transporting large amounts of moisture in the atmosphere, are becoming more frequent and severe in mountainous parts of East Asia as the climate changes. According to global and regional climate models comparing historical trends with a future scenario of 4 degrees of warming of global-mean surface air, these events are likely to become more frequent and intense in the future, especially in the Japanese Alps region.