Atmospheric rivers drive flood damages in the western United States

Corringham, T.W., F.M. Ralph, A. Gershunov, D.R. Cayan and C.A. Talbot, 2019: Atmospheric rivers drive flood damages in the western United States. Science Advances, 5, 12, eaax4631, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aax4631

This paper explores the meteorological causes of damaging floods in the Western U.S. and highlights the leading role of atmospheric rivers in driving flood damages across the West. Put these results together with those on precipitation regime change (Gershunov et al. 2019) and you can extrapolate the damaging impact of future ARs enhanced by the steroids of climate change on livelihoods and the economy. 

This paper has been written about in various media outlets: 

https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/atmospheric-river-storms-create-1-billion-a-year-flood-damage

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/12/04/atmospheric-rivers-caused-percent-wests-recent-flood-damage/

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-04/atmospheric-rivers-cause-billions-in-flood-damage

The paper can be accessed here: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/12/eaax4631