Hailstorms could grow more dangerous and damaging with climate change
Hailstorms can be incredibly dangerous, posing risks to life and property. Then there's the economic damage to cars, crops, and infrastructure caused by large balls of ice falling at high speed from the sky. And the problems could worsen as our planet heats up.
A new study published in Nature predicts that climate change could produce larger, more damaging hailstones in some regions. The editors of Nature have also published a Research Briefing in the same issue summarizing the work.
In recent years, record-breaking hailstorms have made headlines around the world, raising concerns that they are not one-off events. However, current knowledge about future hail risk is limited to only a few well-studied regions. What has been missing is the global fallout and how big these stones will get on a worldwide scale, as when it comes to hail, size matters.
Simulating hailstorms
To help fill in our knowledge gaps, a team of researchers from China and the US used a specialized computer model that tracks the lifespans of hailstones, simulating the exact paths they take as they grow, fall, and melt.