Humans 'affect global rainfall'

Human-induced climate change has affected global rainfall patterns over the 20th Century, a study suggests.

Researchers said changes to the climate had led to an increase in annual average rainfall in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

Climate models have, for a number of years, suggested that human activity has led to changes to the distribution of rain and snow across the globe.

"We show that anthropogenic forcing has had a detectable influence on observed changes in average precipitation within latitudinal bands," the researchers wrote in the paper.