On a warming planet, rising temperatures rapidly increase the air's capacity to "hold" water vapor--by around ~7% per °C (or around ~4% per °F). This leads to the "Expanding Atmospheric Sponge Effect"--whereby the warming atmosphere acts like a progressively larger kitchen sponge, capable of both absorbing more water (when and where available, akin to evaporation from the land surface and transpiration from plants) and yielding more water if "wrung out" (akin to heavier precipitation, when and where conditions are favorable). In this way, warming air directly gives rise to more extreme downpours of rain, more intense and faster-developing droughts--with major implications for hazards like flash floods and wildfires.