Global Climate Change

Fisherman line a pier after an unseasonably warm afternoon in the Red Hook section of the borough of Brooklyn on Thursday, March 22, 2012 in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)
 Amazing Stats from the March 2012 'Heat Wave'
By Bill Deger, Meteorologist
Mar 23, 2012; 7:40 AM ET
While the warmth may finally be beginning to wane in some areas, the number of ways to express how unusual it was is not.
Thousands of records, some thought to be unbreakable, have fallen over the past couple of weeks from the High Plains to the East Coast, and north into Canada.
The unusual warmth has many questioning why, and wondering if this could end up being the new normal. From climate change to ocean temperatures to debris from last year's tsunami, Jillian MacMath has more on the theories offered up by AccuWeather.com's meteorologists.
Though the lasting legacy of the warm spell could end up being one of the above, in the short term, meteorologists and climatologists alike are still struggling to digest the staggering nature of the records that have been broken over the past dozen or so days.
AccuWeather.com Facebook fan Doug T. submitted this photo of apricot trees in bloom on Old Mission Peninsula just east of Traverse City, Mich. Doug adds this blooming is occurring at least six weeks earlier than normal.
The 'Heat Wave' of March 2012, By the Numbers
9 The number of consecutive days that Chicago, Ill., has broken a record high, from March 14 to March 22. Eight of those days saw the mercury climb above 80 degrees, which is normal for mid-June.
93 The temperature swing that occurred over the course of just nine days in International Falls, Minn., from a low of minus 14 degrees on March 9, to a high of 79 degrees on March 18. Also, 10 straight days of new record highs (March 13 to March 22).
26 The number of inches of snow that melted over the course of just seven days in Caribou, Maine, from March 15 to March 22, thanks to the unusual warmth. Also, 18 inches of snow was still on the ground when the first record high fell on March 18 (64 degrees).
32 The gap, in degrees, between the old and new record high on March 21 in Marquette, Mich. The new record high was 81 degrees, obliterating the old record of 49 degrees. The margin of defeat was so great that the low temperature that day was even higher than the old record high temperature.
This is snow depth across the continental U.S. and southern Canada as of March 22. Outside of a few higher elevations, there is no snow on the ground in the country east of the Continental Divide. (NOAA/NOHRSC)
20.7 The temperature departure (in degrees fahrenheit) from normal for the month of March thus far in Winnipeg, Canada. This occurred despite temperatures having dropped below zero for four days early in the month.
1921 The last year it was above 80 degrees in Boston before March 28 of any given calendar year. In reaching 83 degrees on March 22, this came to fruition for the first time since March 21, 1921.
86 The new all-time record high temperature for March in Detroit, Mich., set on March 22. In fact, a new all-time high temperature was set two days in a row, with the mercury first climbing to 84 degrees on March 21.
60 The average low temperature in Chicago, Ill., from March 17 to March 22 of this year. Such low temperatures, about 30 degrees above normal, are more typical for mid-June.
AccuWeather.com Facebook fan Jason S. submitted this photo of beachgoers on Hampton Beach, N.H., on March 22. "I've never seen a scene like this in March in all my 37 years," added Jason.

New All-Time Record High Temperatures for March
Additionally, more than a dozen major cities established new all-time record highs for the month of March. This is especially impressive considering all of these records were set more than a week from the end of the month, which is usually the warmest period.

City New Record High (Date) Old Record High (Date)
Detroit, Mich. 86 (3/22) 82 (3/28/1945)
Lansing, Mich. 86 (3/21) 82 (3/24/1910)
Toledo, Ohio 85 (3/21, 3/22) 83 (3/24/1910)
Bangor, Maine 84 (3/22) 79 (3/29/1946)
Milwaukee, Wis. 84 (3/21) 82 (3/29/1986, 3/31/1986)
Cleveland, Ohio 83 (3/20-3/22) - tie 83 (3/24/1910, 3/25/1945)
Madison, Wis. 83 (3/21) 82 (3/29/1986, 3/31/1981)
Buffalo, N.Y. 82 (3/21) 81 (3/26/1945)
London, Ontario 81 (3/22) 77 (3/30/1998)
Marquette, Mich. 81 (3/21) 71 (3/8/2000)
Ottawa, Ontario 81 (3/21) 80 (3/29/1946)
International Falls, Minn. 79 (3/18) 73 (3/31/1963)
Toronto, Ontario 79 (3/22) 78 (3/28/1945)
Montreal, Quebec 78 (3/21) - tie 78 (3/28/1945)
Caribou, Maine 75 (3/21) 73 (3/30/1962)
Winnipeg, Manitoba 75 (3/19) 74 (3/27/1946)
Quebec City, Quebec 65 (3/21) 64 (3/30/1962)

 AccuWeather.com - Climate Change | Greenhouse Gases continue to Steadily Increase

Mar 23, 2012; 12:24 PM ET
It's still business as usual..........
Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to steadily increase, according to NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory.
The latest readings from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii indicate that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have increased to 393.65 parts per million as of February 2012.
Here are two common questions that NOAA has answered from their FAQ section........
What is the greenhouse effect?
The Sun, which is the Earth's only external form of heat, emits solar radiation mainly in the form of shortwave visible and ultraviolet (UV) energy. As this radiation travels toward the Earth, the atmosphere absorbs about 25% of it, and about 25% is reflected by the clouds back into space. The remaining radiation travels unimpeded to the Earth and warms its surface. The Earth releases back to space the same amount of energy it has absorbed from the Sun. However, the Earth is much cooler than the Sun, so the energy re-emitted from the Earth's surface is much weaker, in the form of invisible longwave infrared (IR) radiation, sometimes called heat radiation. If you stand close to a hot object, but do not touch it, you can feel how the IR radiation heats your skin, although you cannot see the IR rays.
Gases that absorb and trap this IR radiation, such as water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are known as "greenhouse gases". The atmosphere acts like the glass in a greenhouse, allowing much of the shortwave solar radiation to travel through unimpeded, but trapping a lot of the longwave heat energy trying to escape back to space. This process makes the temperature rise in the atmosphere just as it does in the greenhouse. This is the Earth's natural greenhouse effect and keeps the Earth 33 °C warmer than it would be without an atmosphere, at an average 15 °C (59° F).
How can minor atmospheric gases have such a large impact on climate?
The major gases, nitrogen (N2), oxygen (O2), and argon (Ar), which together comprise about 99.8% of the atmosphere, do not absorb visible light, nor infrared light. If the atmosphere contained only those three gases, the radiation would go right through without any effect on the heating of the atmosphere or surface. That leaves it to the minor gases such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, and others to absorb infrared light. The total mass of the atmosphere is very large, about 5 x 1021 grams, or 5 million times a billion metric ton. The amounts of the minor gases are therefore still very large, sufficient to cause the absorption of a major fraction of infrared light in the atmosphere.
A look back at the long term trend of atmospheric CO2 concentration going back to 1000 AD with the help of ice core data.
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All images courtesy of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory.

AccuWeather.com - Climate Change | Update on Sea Ice Volume

Mar 21, 2012; 2:40 PM ET
From time to time I update you on the status of the Arctic sea ice volume, which is actually a better indicator of the overall health of the Arctic sea ice compared to its extent.
Speaking of extent, the Arctic sea ice extent is still slightly growing after showing a sharp increase over the past few weeks. A big reason for this is a continuation of very cold weather and favorable  winds over the Bering Sea. Sea ice extent in this region is well above normal, while most of the remainder of the Arctic is running well below normal.
The NASA image below from yesterday shows that much of the Bering Sea is still covered with sea ice. However, it is important to note that most of that ice is thin, first-year ice that will completely melt out later this Spring and early summer.
Sea ice volume still well below normal
The sea ice volume, which takes into account the area and thickness of the ice is still running well below normal across the Arctic as we continue to lose older, thicker ice and replace it with younger, thinner ice that is much more prone to completely melting away during the summer months.
The University of Washington BPIOMAS sea ice volume chart below shows the updated, estimated annual sea ice volume in the Arctic with the trend (blue line).
The second chart compares the daily sea ice volume in the Arctic from so far this year to 2011,2010, 2007 and the mean. Last year experienced the lowest sea ice volume and it appears that 2012 is on a similar pace.
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Images courtesy of the Polar Science Center from the University of Washington.

What's Causing All the Warm Weather?


                              Photo by G�nay Mutlu of photos.com
By Jillian MacMath, AccuWeather.com Staff Writer
Mar 21, 2012; 6:37 PM ET
First, the warm winter. Now, an unbelievably warm March. The question on everyone's mind lately seems to be, "What's going on?"
Though the warm weather has given many the opportunity to get outdoors, tend to their gardens, and get a jump-start on their summer work-out regimens, others are concerned about what's causing this strange pattern and what implications it might have down the road.
Though it is undeniable that temperatures are far above average in many areas, the debate rages on between meteorologists as to what exactly is causing it.
Many non-meteorologists are deducing that global warming, a theory that has gained that substantial media attention over the past few decades, is to blame for the bizarre weather patterns. But meteorologists are keeping their distance from this assumption.
"You need more data to prove global warming," AccuWeather senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson said. "In only one season, you really can't link it."
Temperatures in the West during this past winter have averaged near to slightly below normal. December through February, temperatures in Seattle were 1.5 degrees below average. March 1 through March 12, temperatures averaged 4 degrees below normal.
However, temperatures so far this year have been off the charts in much of the central and eastern U.S., especially last week. Fort Wayne, Ind., experienced record highs for seven straight days, reaching as high as 84 degrees.
Chicago experienced another anomaly, hitting highs that were 15 degrees above normal for the city 10 days in a row. On March 20, the normal high of 48 was shattered when the mercury soared to 85 degrees F.
"It's certainly not hyperbole to call this a historic weather event," AccuWeather Meteorologist Jim Andrews said. But he's not jumping on the global warming bandwagon just yet.
"If the proposition is that Earth's climate is changing - and most people say warming - this is how it might manifest," he said. But he believes the unusual weather may be caused by a sort of "perfect storm coincidence" related to North Atlantic oscillation, Atlantic oscillation, the Pacific/North American pattern, El Nina and La Nina.
"What happens in the oceans is undoubtedly very important to what happens on land," Andrews said. "It may well be that the state of the ocean water temperature surrounding North America is just in an ideal arrangement to maximize warmth over North America."
Expert Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski believes it's a culmination of causes.
"What we're seeing is probably an overlap of several parameters occurring simultaneously. Because of what happened over the winter, you have warm lakes, lack of snow cover. You have a carry-over effect, too," Sosnowski said.
"The biggest thing in my opinion would be Arctic oscillation. It trapped most of the arctic air in the far north and allowed milder air to sweep across Canada and much of the U.S."
Other theories diverge completely from global warming, pattern change and oscillation theories, including that of Expert Senior Meteorologist Henry Margusity.
Margusity blogged that there may be a correlation between the Pacific Ocean's temperature anomalies and the debris field from the tsunami that hit Japan last March. According to Margusity, the two match up almost perfectly.
"The theory is that the debris floating in the Pacific caused a large area of warm water in the north Pacific. Understanding that the ocean and atmosphere are coupled, if one changes the other changes; i.e. La Nina and El Nino patterns are perfect examples," Margusity said.
"So, if that area of the Pacific is warmed, it will cause a natural boundary for storms to develop along. The last 90-day storm tracks show many of the Pacific storms developed right along that zone."
Whatever the reason for this year's unseasonable conditions, it doesn't appear a consensus is on the horizon.


Mar 7, 2012; 7:03 AM ET

Editor's note: This article is the second of a three-part series by John Carey. Part 1, posted on June 28, 2011 is "Storm Warning: Extreme Weather Is a Product of Climate Change" and Part 3, posted on June 30, 2011 is "Our Extreme Future: Predicting and Coping with the Effects of a Changing Climate."


Extreme floods, prolonged droughts, searing heat waves, massive rainstorms and the like don't just seem like they've become the new normal in the last few years—they have become more common, according to data collected by reinsurance company Munich Re (see Part 1 of this series). But has this increase resulted from human-caused climate change or just from natural climatic variations? After all, recorded floods and droughts go back to the earliest days of mankind, before coal, oil and natural gas made the modern industrial world possible.


Until recently scientists had only been able to say that more extreme weather is "consistent" with climate change caused by greenhouse gases that humans are emitting into the atmosphere. Now, however, they can begin to say that the odds of having extreme weather have increased because of human-caused atmospheric changes—and that many individual events would not have happened in the same way without global warming. The reason: The signal of climate change is finally emerging
from the "noise"—the huge amount of natural variability in weather.


HURRICANE KATRINA battered New Orleans in 2005
Image: NOAA


Scientists compare the normal variation in weather with rolls of the dice. Adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere loads the dice, increasing odds of such extreme weather events. It's not just that the weather dice are altered, however. As Steve Sherwood, co-director of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Australia, puts it, "it is more like painting an extra spot on each face of one of the dice, so that it goes from 2 to 7 instead of 1 to 6. This increases the odds of rolling 11 or 12, but also makes it possible to roll 13."


Why? Basic physics is at work: The planet has already warmed roughly 1 degree Celsius since preindustrial times, thanks to CO2and other greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. And for every 1-degree C (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) rise in temperature, the amount of moisture that the atmosphere can contain rises by 7 percent, explains Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the U.K. Met Office's Hadley Center for Climate Change. "That's quite dramatic," he says. In some places, the increase has been much larger. Data gathered by Gene Takle, professor of meteorology at Iowa State University in Ames, show a 13 percent rise in summer moisture over the past 50 years in the state capital, Des Moines.


The physics of too much rain
The increased moisture in the atmosphere inevitably means more rain. That's obvious. But not just any kind of rain, the climate models predict. Because of the large-scale energy balance of the planet, "the upshot is that overall rainfall increases only 2 to 3 percent per degree of warming, whereas extreme rainfall increases 6 to 7 percent," Stott says. The reason again comes from physics. Rain happens when the atmosphere cools enough for water vapor to condense into liquid. "However, because of the increasing amount of greenhouse gases in the troposphere, the radiative cooling is less efficient, as less radiation can escape to space," Stott explains. "Therefore the global precipitation increases less, at about 2 to 3 percent per degree of warming." But because of the extra moisture, when precipitation does occur (in both rain and snow), it's more likely to be in bigger events.


Iowa is one of many places that fits the pattern. Takle documented a three- to seven-fold increase in high rainfall events in the state, including the 500-year Mississippi River flood in 1993, the 2008 Cedar Rapids flood as well as the 500-year event in 2010 in Ames, which inundated the Hilton Coliseum basketball court in eight feet (2.5 meters) of water . "We can't say with confidence that the 2010 Ames flood was caused by climate change, but we can say that the dice are loaded to bring more of these events," Takle says.


And more events seem to be in the news every month, from unprecedented floods in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to massive snowstorms that crippled the U.S. Northeast in early 2011, to the November 2010 to January 2011 torrents in Australia that flooded an area the size of Germany and France . This "disaster of biblical proportions," as local Australian officials called it, even caused global economic shock waves: The flooding of the country's enormously productive coal mines sent world coal prices soaring.


More stormy weather
More moisture and energy in the atmosphere, along with warmer ocean temperatures also mean more intense hurricanes, many scientists say. In fact, 2010 was the first year in decades in which two simultaneous category 4 hurricanes, Igor and Julia, formed in the Atlantic Ocean. In addition, the changed conditions bring an increased likelihood of more powerful thunderstorms with violent updrafts, like a July 23, 2010, tempest in Vivian, S.D., that produced hailstones that punched softball-size holes through roofs—and created a behemoth ball of ice measured at a U.S. record 8 inches (20 centimeters) in diameter even after it had partially melted. "I've never seen a storm like that before—and hope I'll never go through anything like it," says Les Scott, the Vivian farmer and rancher who found the hailstone .


Warming the planet alters large-scale circulation patterns as well. Scientists know that the sun heats moist air at the equator, causing the air to rise. As it rises, the air cools and sheds most of its moisture as tropical rain. Once six to 10 miles (9.5 to 16 kilometers) aloft, the now dry air travels toward the poles, descending when it reaches the subtropics, normally at the latitude of the Baja California peninsula. This circulation pattern, known as a Hadley cell, contributes to desertification, trade winds and the jet stream.


On a warmer planet, however, the dry air will travel farther north and south from the equator before it descends, climate models predict, making areas like the U.S. Southwest and the Mediterranean even drier. Such an expanded Hadley cell would also divert storms farther north. Are the models right? Richard Seager of Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory has been looking for a climate change–induced drying trend in the Southwest, "and there seems to be some tentative evidence that it is beginning to happen," he says. "It gives us confidence in the models." In fact, other studies show that the Hadley cells have not only expanded, they've expanded more than the models predicted.


Such a change in atmospheric circulation could explain both the current 11-year drought in the Southwest and Minnesota's status as the number one U.S. state for tornadoes last year. On October 26, 2010, the Minneapolis area even experienced record low pressure in what Paul Douglas, founder and CEO of WeatherNation in Minnesota, dubbed a "landicane"—a hurricanelike storm that swept across the country. "I thought the windows of my home would blow in," Douglas recalls. "I've chased tornados and flown into hurricanes but never experienced anything like this before." Yet it makes sense in the context of climate change, he adds. "Every day, every week, another piece of the puzzle falls into place," he says. "More extreme weather seems to have become the rule, not just in the U.S. but in Europe and Asia."


The rise of climate attribution
Is humankind really responsible? That's where the burgeoning field of climate attribution, pioneered by Hadley's Peter Stott and other scientists, comes in. The idea is to look for trends in the temperature or precipitation data that provide evidence of overall changes in climate. When those trends exist, it then becomes possible to calculate how much climate change has contributed to extreme events. Or in more technical terms, the probability of a particular temperature or rainfall amount is shaped roughly like a bell curve. A change in climate shifts the whole curve. That, in turn, increases the likelihood of experiencing the more extreme weather at the tail end of the bell curve. Whereas day-to-day weather remains enormously variable, the underlying human-caused shift in climate increases the power and number of the events at the extreme. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Deke Arndt puts it more colorfully: "Weather throws the punches, but climate trains the boxer," he says. By charting the overall shift, then, it's possible to calculate the increased chances of extreme events due to global warming.

Read the rest of the study and learn about part three.
By: John Carey
Continue Reading on scientificamerican.com >

Transition from Coal to Natural Gas not the Answer

Mar 15, 2012; 12:02 PM ET
Replacing all the world's coal power plants with natural gas would do little to reduce global warming over the next 100 years, according to new research published in Environmental Review Letters.
Switching from coal to natural gas would cut the warming effect in 100 years' time by only about 20 percent, while switching to renewable or nuclear energy would slash the warming effect about two-thirds to three-quarters, according to the National Geographic News story.
If you click on the above National Geographic link, the image of the coal fired power plant stands out to me. The minute I saw that image I correctly guessed it as the same power plant that I drove by last month on our way to a skiing trip in West Virginia. The whole landscape up on that high plateau was erie as we drove through... few trees, large mounds of dirt and basically barren for miles beyond the power plant. Obviously, a lot of coal mining (mountaintop) going on.
The research team of physicist Nathan Myhrvold and climate researcher Ken Caldeira tested the effects of making the coal to natural gas transition from as little as one year to as many as 100 years.
Compared to emissions from coal, "cutting emissions by a factor of two or three hardly makes a difference," said Myhrvold. To avoid a significant amount of warming this century, he added, "you must cut emissions by a dramatic factor"-by ten or twenty times. (from Nat. Geographic)
"There are lots of reasons to like natural gas, but climate change isn't one of them," said Myhrvold. "It's worthless for (fighting) climate change, as far as we can tell." (from Nat. Geographic)

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