Saturation vapor pressure increases by 7% when temperature rises by 1 degree Celsius according to the Clausius-Clapeyron equation. Warmer air contains significantly more moisture than cold air and this trend has been confirmed by satellite and radiosonde measurements.
Changes to the global water cycle have been observed since at least 1980 with precipitation over land increasing during that period. The rate of increase became faster after the 1980s and heavy rain events have become stronger and more frequent as the Earth warms.
The Indo-Pacific warm pool area grew from 22 million square kilometers between 1900 and 1980 to 40 million square kilometers between 1981 and 2018. This doubling of size altered global rainfall patterns significantly and changed the life cycle of the Madden Julian Oscillation.
Observed increases in the SC2000 metric rose by 5.2% from 1960 to 2017 indicating that evaporation is increasing even more than before. That trend accelerated sharply after 1991 and reflects changes visible in surface salinity measurements taken since the 1930s.
Slope failures affected about 25% of the surveyed landscape in northwest Greenland where extreme summer rainfall events occurred during 2016 and 2017. These storms triggered mass movement processes like debris flows and shifts toward rain-dominated precipitation regimes influence geomorphic stability in the High Arctic.