Dubai deluge likely made worse by warming world, scientists find [Video]

A powerful rainstorm that wreaked havoc on the desert nation of the United Arab Emirates last week was likely made more intense because of climate change, a team of international scientists has found.

The World Weather Attribution (WWA) group, composed of researchers from around the globe, said rain storms like the one that struck last Monday have become 10 to 40 per cent more intense because of human-induced climate change. 

The storm was also a product of El Niño, a natural, cyclical warming in the Pacific Ocean that leads to more rain in the region, the researchers said.

“Both El Niño and human-caused climate change appear to be influencing heavy rainfall in the UAE and Oman,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London, and one of the authors of the study. 

“While we can’t stop El Niño, we can stop climate change.”

The WWA, founded in 2015, studiesextreme weather events, such as droughts, floods and heat waves in an …