Washington – Future Holds More Extreme Wild Weather by Warming Climate

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    Washington – For a world already weary of weather catastrophes, the latest warning from top climate scientists paints a grim future: More floods, more heat waves, more droughts and greater costs to deal with them.

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    A draft summary of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press says the extremes caused by global warming could eventually grow so severe that some locations become “increasingly marginal as places to live.”

    The report from the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change marks a change in climate science, from focusing on subtle shifts in average temperatures to concentrating on the harder-to-analyze freak events that grab headlines, hurt economies and kill people.

    “The extremes are a really noticeable aspect of climate change,” said Jerry Meehl, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “I think people realize that the extremes are where we are going to see a lot of the impacts of climate change.”

    The final version of the report from a panel of leading climate scientists will be issued in a few weeks, after a meeting in Uganda. The draft says there is at least a 2-in-3 probability that climate extremes have already worsened because of man-made greenhouse gases.

    The most recent bizarre weather extreme, the pre-Halloween snowstorm that crippled parts of the Northeast last weekend, cannot be blamed on climate change and probably isn’t the type of storm that will increase with global warming, according to four meteorologists and climate scientists.

    Experts on extreme storms have focused more closely on the increasing number of super-heavy rainstorms, not snow, NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt said.

    By the end of the century, the intense, single-day rainstorms that typically happen once every 20 years will probably happen about twice a decade, the report said.

    The opposite type of disaster — a drought such as the stubbornly long dry spell gripping Texas and parts of the Southwest — could also happen more often as the world warms, said Schmidt and Meehl, who reviewed part of the climate panel report.

    Studies have not yet specifically tied global warming to the continuing drought, but it is consistent with computer models that indicate current climate trends will worsen existing droughts, Meehl said. Scientifically connecting a weather disaster with global warming is a complicated and time-consuming task that can take more than a year and involve lots of computer calculations.

    Researchers have also predicted more intense monsoons with climate change. Warmer air can hold more water and impart more energy to weather systems, changing the dynamics of storms and where and how they hit.

    Thailand is now coping with massive flooding from monsoonal rains — an event that illustrates how climate is also connected with other manmade issues such as population growth, urban development and river management, Schmidt said.

    In fact, the report says, “for some climate extremes in many regions, the main driver for future increases in losses will be socioeconomic” rather than a result of greenhouse gases.

    The panel was formed by the United Nations and World Meteorological Organization. In the past, it has discussed extreme events in snippets in its report. But this time, the scientists are putting them all together.

    The report, which needs approval by diplomats at the mid-November meeting, tries to measure the confidence scientists have in their assessment of climate extremes both future and past.

    Chris Field, one of the leaders of the climate change panel, said he and other authors declined to comment because the report is still subject to change.

    The summary chapter did not detail which regions of the world might suffer extremes so severe as to leave them only marginally habitable.

    The report does say scientists are “virtually certain” — 99 percent — that the world will have more extreme spells of heat and fewer of cold. Heat waves could peak as much as 5 degrees hotter by mid-century and even 9 degrees hotter by the end of the century.

    From June to August this year in the United States, blistering heat set 2,703 daily high temperature records, compared with only 300 cold records during that period. That made it the hottest summer in the U.S. since the Dust Bowl of 1936, according to Weather Underground Meteorology Director Jeff Masters, who was not involved in the study.

    And there’s an 80 percent chance that the killer Russian heat wave of 2010 would not have happened without the added push of global warming, according to a study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    Scientists expect future hurricanes and other tropical cyclones to have stronger winds, but they won’t increase in number and may actually decrease.

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel, who studies climate’s effects on hurricanes, disagrees and believes more of these intense storms will occur.

    And global warming isn’t the sole villain in future climate disasters, the climate report says. An even bigger problem will be the number of people — especially the poor — who live in harm’s way.

    The 18-page summary report isn’t completely grim. It says some “low-regrets measures” can help reduce disaster risks and costs, including better preparedness, sustainable land and water management, better public health monitoring and building improvements.

    University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, who was not among the authors, said the report was written to be “so bland” that it may not matter to world leaders.

    But Masters said the basic findings seem to be proven true by actual events.

    “In the U.S., this has been the weirdest weather year we’ve had for my 30 years, hands down.”


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    14 Comments
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    MidwesternGuy
    MidwesternGuy
    12 years ago

    In the 1970’s, it was the Coming Global Ice Age. In the 90’s, it was Global Warming. Now it’s Climate Change.

    None of the scary scenarios predicted have come to pass. I wish I had some of the original articles from the 1970s that showed how cold it would be in 2011. But they always tell us that we have to listen to the scientists who can only speculate about the future.

    The real agenda is to take away as many freedoms as possible and to force people to minimize their lifestyles, which is yet another way to usurp freedom.

    Also, it’s a nice substitute for religion, as they spout forth about “Mother Earth” being angry. Their chesed is recycling, ch”v. Ask a real hard-core environmentalist and you’ll see. Better yet, take my word and stay away from them.

    12 years ago

    It has nothing to do with global warming since it is colder than it was in the 38 and 39
    This is call the mushroom theory; keep them in the door and feed them horse manure.

    shredready
    shredready
    12 years ago

    but rush will say this is bull

    Paulie123
    Paulie123
    12 years ago

    Al Gore is right about global warming. These freak storms taking place throughout the world are all because of global warming. Its obvious whats going on and those that wish to deny it may as well claim that the world is flat

    DRE53
    DRE53
    12 years ago

    The only thing these global warming experts are able to tell us is what “can” and “could” happen.
    Why should this even be reported?
    Everybody knows that anything could happen if hashem wants so. So what expertese are these folks trying to sell us. That it could get warmer? That catastrophes can happen?
    What a joke.

    allmark
    allmark
    12 years ago

    It is painful to read this because almost all of it is demonstrably untrue. Just one example should be enough to cast skepticism on the entire house of cards.

    The fact, which no longer questioned by anyone is the inconvenient problem that temperatures have NOT risen in 10 years. Given this fact, it is impossible to believe that an increase in temperature that didn’t occur, is still somehow responsible for today’s weather.

    Also be aware that the same people whose models so confidentially predict climate far in the future, were nonetheless completely incapable of predicting

    SherryTheNoahide
    SherryTheNoahide
    12 years ago

    It’s painful for me to see so many intelligent people REFUSE to except that climate change is a reality!

    I’ve posted this before, but I’ll say it again: I live in Washington State- a SKIING state! The only time we get snowfall now is in the mountains, and if it snows anywhere else in the state… it’s for maybe a weekend & then it all melts!

    Or… out of nowhere… we’ll have a FREAK snow storm that completely shuts down the whole community! Kids can’t go to school, people can’t get out of their driveways, etc.

    Sometimes these freak storms happen   the weirdest times too! One time, we had one in April! APRIL! (lol)

    The winters & summers of my childhood are NO MORE.

    It is so completely obvious that there is serious climate change going on, that sometimes I wonder if the people who deny it are just living like hermits & not going out at all! (lol)

    And no… we’re (mankind) not necessarily RESPONSIBLE for every aspect of the climate changing so rapidly… but we aren’t helping it either! We’re speeding up our destruction, and hardly any of us care!

    And the ones who DO care… are called “fanatics”, and are made fun of for recycling! *shaking my head*

    LISTENUP35
    LISTENUP35
    12 years ago

    None of the models upon which the predictions are based ever incot rporated a volcano becoming active and spewing hundreds of millions of particulates into the atmosphere and creating a cold spot on the earth, as happened last year. There are so many variables that are unaccounted for, so much data that is flawed in the data collection, and so little accuracy about weather conditions from the past beyond 200 years, that prediction ought to be thought of as wishful thinking.

    MidwesternGuy
    MidwesternGuy
    12 years ago

    (continued) ACT RIGHT NOW. And not one single disaster has ever come to pass. Should we pollute purposefully? Of course not. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t continue to use fossil fuels, coal, and natural gas which have made our lifestyles possible, either. Parenthetically, the sun has a far greater impact on our climate, and we can’t control the sun’s activity. Those fluctuations are just part of the natural cycle.

    The second point was regarding the people for whom big-E Environmentalism has become their religion. Instead of recognizing that people can have differing views, they view people with whom they disagree as “deniers” as if they themselves hold the only Truth. And it ties into my earlier point, that it’s really more about taking control of the economy, rather than really wanting to improve life here.

    Do you really think Hashem gave us a world that could be destroyed? He already promised to withhold from global destruction.

    LiberalismIsADisease
    LiberalismIsADisease
    12 years ago

    There is NOTHING that “man” could do about this. This is ALL the work of HKBH. If you dont like it, kents shtayn oifn kup and spit nickles!