Steve King’s Climate Change Rainfall Claims

In a recent town hall, Iowa Rep. Steve King focused on the positives of climate change, inaccurately stating that increased evaporation under higher temperatures will lead to rain in “more and more places” — a result that’s “surely gotta shrink the deserts and expand the green growth.”

Part of what King says is true — warmer temperatures will increase evaporation — but rainfall is expected to be uneven, growing in some places, and lessening in others. Climate models tend to project precipitation increases in areas where it already rains or snows, while decreases are projected in drier regions.

King made his comments in a town hall in Cherokee, Iowa, on April 23 in response to a woman’s question about geoengineering (at about the 25:30 mark in the video).

“You didn’t mention the global warming part of this, other than the weather patterns that are there,” King said. “But I think that, I began, when I first looked at that, I thought, ‘I’m hearing all these things that