"Or drought. We're not sure. Either way, it'll be EXTREME!!11!"
"In many places in the western US, we experience a lot of natural disasters," says Samantha Stevenson at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "Some of the most important ones are wildfires, many of which have burned through California and other western states recently. We also have rainstorms that can lead to devastating floods. Climate change has been known to amplify both these things."
Following wildfires, there is a higher risk of landslides and flash floods for several years in the burned area because it takes time for the ground cover and vegetation that was once there to regrow. Heavy rainfall can trigger these events.
Stevenson and her colleagues decided to study how often these extreme rainfall events will occur following a wildfire over the coming decades. The team ran simulations of the climate in the western US, under the most extreme warming scenario — in which greenhouse gases continue to be emitted uncapped.