Climate expert says drought, flooding threaten Texas

A top climate scientist warned Wednesday that Texas faces a dual threat from floods and drought if global warming is left unchecked.

James Hansen, in Houston to speak before the Progressive Forum on Wednesday night, said predictions made two decades ago about the effects of a warming world are now beginning to come true.


“Texas is in the line of fire for double-barreled climate impacts,” said Hansen, who heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “What we said in the 1980s, and is beginning to come true now, is that both ends of the hydrological cycle get intensified by global warming.”

A warmer climate increases evaporation, he said. It both sucks moisture from the ground, intensifying drought, and increases atmospheric humidity, which causes more rain to fall during extreme events.

Houston Chronicle