`Although questions remain about whether the rise in global temperatures will endure, what is certain is that a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture that later

`Although questions remain about whether the rise in global temperatures will endure, what is certain is that a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture that later falls as rain, while a warmer ocean evaporates more water to the air, according to Sarah Kapnick, chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “These events are happening more frequently now on the extreme precipitation scale,” Kapnick said. “They’re happening in places that we don’t think of as being rainy, like Dubai, so it’s all the more surprising when they do happen.” Last month’s East Africa floods occurred during a rainy season that runs from March to May, although the actual amount of rain varies in a given year. This time, the rainfall has been amplified by a weather pattern called the Indian Ocean Dipole. In its positive phase, the dipole pushes warm water against the eastern coast of Africa; in its negative phase, the warm water sloshes back across toward Australia and Indonesia. This year, the dipole is stronger than normal, which is fueling heavy rainfall in areas on the western side of the Indian Ocean, such as Kenya, according to Joyce Kimutai, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and member of World Weather Attribution, a group of scientists from universities and research institutes in Europe and the U.S.`