The natural weather disasters continue to mount up this year. Most notable to U.S. residents has been recent onslaught of deadly tornado outbreaks and the massive Spring flooding.
Is climate change to blame? Some experts say yes, others say no. I say maybe.
This question, which has been popping up all over the media in recent months is not a new one, we covered this subject after Katrina and following a number of major snowstorms and heatwaves over the past decade.
You cannot tie individual extreme weather events to climate change. There is just not enough data to support that right now.
However, most credible studies do show that climate change will lead to an increase in the frequency of these extreme weather events across the globe. In this case we are specifically talking severe thunderstorms/deadly tornadoes, drought, heat waves, intense rainfall and catastrophic flooding.
Research also indicates the climate change is likely increasing the strength of hurricanes, but not necessarily the total number.
With better storm observation tools, even the smallest, most rural tornadoes are being detected now, which was not the case over 30 years ago. Expanding populations are also putting more and more people in harm's way.
If we continue to see a steady, long-term trend increase in these horrible events over the coming years, which I believe will be the case even when you factor in the previous paragraph, then we may be able to go back and say that climate change was at least partly to blame.
This Spring's extreme severe weather in the southern U.S. was predicted by AccuWeather.com...
AccuWeather.com meteorologists knew by February of this year that the upcoming spring was going to be a wild one in terms of severe weather and flooding, and it was not because climate change was ongoing.
The combination of a weakening La Nina and the anticipated sharp temperature anomaly gradient between the northern U.S. and the southern U.S. told us that the jet stream running across the U.S. would be abnormally strong this spring. A strong jet stream leads to more powerful storms and thunderstorms, which increases the chances of large tornadoes and widespread flooding.
I am not downplaying climate change by any means. I personally know climate change is happening and that human actions are a main cause. There is little to debate about that.
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has released their global temperature anomaly data for the Spring of 2013.....
NASA has released a new detailed map which gives a much clearer picture of what Antarctica looks like from the ice surface down to the bedrock below..
Satellite measured temperature anomaly data for May 2013
A new, peer-reviewed study from the University of Waterloo (Canada) states that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are the main cause of global warming since the 1970s and not carbon dioxide (CO2).
There continues to be growing, scientific evidence that the dramatic decline in Arctic sea ice in recent time is indeed having an influence on the atmospheric circulation....
Alaska glaciers have been found to be one of the top contributors to global sea level rise.
Climate Change
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