Weird weather and the new climate reality - MiamiHerald.com
Polling stations in Connecticut were commandeered to shelter residents still without power eight days after a freak October snowstorm. Two months earlier, residents of Bastrop County, Texas, lost a record 476 homes to a single wildfire. And corn farmers in Mississippi County, Mo., are still picking up the pieces after their land disappeared under the raging Mississippi River in May.
The human toll from a year of extraordinary weather is high and getting higher. It is no longer just in distant places like Brazil, Somalia or Thailand that extreme events are wreaking havoc on people’s lives and livelihoods. It is right here in the United States. Communities across the country have endured severe storms, record-breaking temperatures, droughts and flooding - in what appears an alarming upward trend in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather. NOAA has already tallied 10 disasters through August 2011 each caused more than a billion dollars worth of damage.
So what is going on? Public and media attention has focused mainly on the destruction and hardship triggered by these disasters, rather than their causes. Yet scientific evidence increasingly points to a link between climate change and extreme weather trends. In other words, these may not be just random weather events. Greenhouse gases from human activities are likely partly to blame.
In the latest authoritative report making this connection, the International Panel on Climate Change recently warned that a warmer world will likely bring more heavy rainfall, heat waves and breaking temperatures. The findings echo those of a 2009 assessment by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (sponsored by 13 federal government agencies), which pointed to climate change as a likely culprit in warmer nights, heat waves and heavy downpours.
The report also predicted that drought in the American Southwest is likely to worsen, with severe implications for wildfires and water supplies. Earlier this year the U.S. National Academy of Sciences added its voice to the chorus of warnings when it reported similar findings.