Nate Price

Climate change has caused an unexpected surge in both drought and precipitation rates across the globe, directly affecting over fifty million Americans. The severity of these extreme climate events has consistently been increasing in the past fifty years. Warmer temperatures cause greater evaporation rates leading to drought, and with more moisture in the air comes increased precipitation and flooding rates in particularly vulnerable regions. The goal of this research paper, written by Richard R. Heim Jr.,  is to analyze the trends of precipitation and other climate extremes over recent decades to assess how human activity has impacted the climate. The paper also aims to provide a comprehensive review of the methods researchers currently use to collect and classify climate data. By using trend detection and time-series analysis, climate extremes are characterized by annual intensity, and contrasted with pre-existing models. The data and trends that are collected are then further examined against climate change indices to assess the impact of human activity on these climate events, and how varying rates of precipitation, in turn, affect human activity and systems. It was observed that historically wet regions have recently experienced increasing amounts of precipitation, while the opposite is true for dry regions. The annual precipitation and drought rates are rising in North America and the United States, and human activity has absolutely played a role in dictating this change.