Climate Change Will Increase Likelihood of Seeing Rainbows in Northern Latitudes

According to a new study, climate change will increase the likelihood of seeing rainbows.

The study's authors estimate that by 2100, the average land location on Earth will have 5% more days with rainbows than at the start of the twenty-first century.

Climate change to produce more rainbows

(Photo : Stainless Images/Unsplash)

Northern latitudes and extremely high elevations, where warming is expected to result in less snow and more rain, will see the greatest increases in rainbow occurrence, as per ScienceDaily.

However, places with less rainfall as a result of climate change, such as the Mediterranean, are expected to lose rainbow days.

Rainbows form when water droplets reflect sunlight and are therefore dependent on sunlight and rainfall.

Human activities, such as the use of fossil fuels warm the atmosphere, altering the patterns and amounts of rainfall and cloud cover.

"Living in Hawai'i, I was grateful for the stunning, ephemeral rainbows that were a part of my daily life," said Kimberly Carlson, the study's lead author who is now at New York University's Department of Environmental Studies.

"I was curious about how climate change might impact such rainbow-viewing opportunities."

Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii at Manoa's Department of Geography and Environment was intrigued by the question and proposed it as the focus of a project for one of his graduate courses.

"We frequently study how climate change directly affects people's health and livelihoods, such as the occurrence of heat stroke during climate change-enhanced heat waves," Mora said.

Few researchers, however, have investigated how climate change may affect the aesthetic qualities of our environment, and no one has bothered to map rainbow occurrences, let alone under climate change.

To find an answer, a team of UH Manoa students examined photographs uploaded to Flickr, a social media platform where people share photographs.

They combed through tens of thousands of photos labeled "rainbow" from around the world to identify rainbows caused by the refraction of light by rain droplets.

The scientifists had to sort through photos of rainbow artwork, rainbow flags, rainbow trout, rainbow eucalyptus, and rainbow foods to find the real rainbows, according to Amanda Wong, then undergraduate student in Global Environmental Science at the UH Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) and a co-author on the paper.

They then used rainbow photo locations and maps of precipitation, cloud cover, and sun angle to train a rainbow prediction model.

Finally, they used their model to forecast current and future rainbow occurrences across the globe.

Islands, according to the model, are rainbow hotspots.

The Hawaiian Islands, which have recently been dubbed the "rainbow capital of the world," are expected to have a few more rainbow days per year.

The authors did not go into detail about how changes in a rainbow occurrence may affect human well-being.

Rainbows, on the other hand, have been an important part of human culture throughout history and around the world, and they are visually appealing.

Climate change will have far-reaching consequences for all aspects of human life on Earth.

Changes in intangible aspects of our environment, such as sound and light, are part of these changes and, according to Carlson, deserve more attention from researchers.

Also Read: Full Moon Might Reveal a Nighttime Rainbow on Saint Patrick's Day

Weather and Climate

Rising global average temperatures have been linked to widespread changes in weather patterns, as per EPA.

According to scientific studies, extreme weather events such as heat waves and large storms are likely to become more frequent or more intense as a result of human-caused climate change.

Long-term climate change can have a direct or indirect impact on many aspects of society, potentially disrupting them.

Warmer average temperatures, for example, may increase air conditioning costs and contribute to the spread of diseases such as Lyme disease, but they may also improve growing conditions for some crops. Weather extremes pose a threat to society.

Extreme heat events that are more frequent and intense can cause more illnesses and deaths, especially among vulnerable populations, as well as damage to some crops.

While increased precipitation can replenish water supplies and help agriculture, intense storms can cause property damage, loss of life, and population displacement, as well as temporarily disrupt essential services like transportation, telecommunications, energy, and water supplies.