Extreme Weather
Killer Heat in the United States
Extreme heat is among the deadliest weather hazards society faces. During extremely hot days, heat-related deaths spike and hospital admissions for heat-related illnesses rise, especially among people experiencing poverty, elderly adults, and other vulnerable groups (NWS 2018; CDC 2017a). Temperatures around the world have been increasing for decades in response to rising heat-trapping emissions from human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels. These rising temperatures are causing more days of dangerous—even deadly—heat locally. This Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) analysis shows that if we stay on our current global emissions path, extreme heat days are poised to rise steeply in frequency and severity in just the next few decades. This heat would cause large areas of the United States to become dangerously hot and would threaten the health, lives, and livelihoods of millions of people. Such heat could also make droughts and wildfires more severe, harm ecosystems, cause crops to fail, and reduce the reliability of the infrastructure we depend on.
How Climate Change Could Be Linked to Stronger Hurricanes
NBC Channel 6 Florida 06/07/2019
“We can think of a hurricane as an engine,” said Dr. Mann. “It’s expanding energy. It’s doing work in the form of those winds at the surface that we’re familiar with. As we increase that temperature contrast by warming the surface, that engine becomes more efficient. It can do more work.”
Global Warming Is Messing with the Jet Stream. That Means More Extreme Weather
Inside Climate News 10/31/2018 The study identifies how the faster warming of the Arctic twists the jet stream into an extreme pattern that leads to persistent heat and drought extremes in some regions, with flooding in other areas.
Projected changes in persistent extreme summer weather events: The role of quasi-resonant amplification
A series of persistent, extreme, and costly summer weather events over the past decade and a half, including the 2003 European heat wave, 2010 Pakistan flood/Russian heat wave, 2011 Texas drought, 2013 European floods, 2015 California wildfires, and 2016 Alberta wildfires have led to ongoing discussion in the scientific literature regarding the relationship between anthropogenic climate change and warm-season weather extremes (1–27). Some increases in summer weather extremes can be explained by relatively straightforward thermodynamic processes, e.g., upward shifts in the temperature distribution leading to increases in the frequency of heat waves (1, 2, 5, 12, 13) or the influence of a warming atmosphere on intense precipitation events (10, 15, 16). A growing number of studies (3, 7, 8, 11, 14–16, 18–20, 22, 23, 26–28), however, suggest that mechanisms involving atmospheric dynamics are necessary to explain the characteristics—particularly the unusually persistent and amplified disturbances in the jet stream—that are associated with persistent extreme summer weather events. Petoukhov et al. (11, 22) demonstrated that planetary waves within the synoptic wave number range (wave numbers 6 to 8) can become effectively trapped in a latitudinal waveguide depending on the meridional profile of the midlatitude westerly jet, thus providing a mechanism for the time dependence of resonant behavior, because that profile exhibits substantial variability in time. If these waveguide conditions hold, then a pronounced amplification of waves that are excited by orographic or thermal forcing can occur (32). This phenomenon is referred to as quasi-resonant amplification (QRA).
Is Climate Change Fueling Tornadoes?
Inside Climate News 06/01/2019
There is growing evidence that "a warming atmosphere, with more moisture and turbulent energy, favors increasingly large outbreaks of tornadoes, like the outbreak we've witnessed in the last few days," said Penn State University climate researcher Michael Mann.
Floods, tornadoes, snow in May: Extreme weather driven by climate change across US
Flooding along the Mississippi River is the worst it’s been since 1927. More than 50 tornadoes touched down during the Memorial Day weekend. In Denver, it snowed more than three inches last week. Climate scientists say this is only the beginning of what will be decades of increasingly dangerous and damaging extreme weather – and there’s no question that much of it’s being driven by global warming.
Are hurricanes getting stronger – and is the climate crisis to blame?
The proportion of tropical storms that rapidly strengthen into powerful hurricanes has tripled over the past 30 years, according to recent research. A swift increase in pace over a 24-hour period makes hurricanes less predictable, despite improving hurricane forecasting systems, and more likely to cause widespread damage.
Losing Clouds
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Losing-Marine-Stratocumulus-Clouds-Could-Create-Mega-Hothouse Climate Weather Underground 5/18/2019
If humanity maintains its current business-as-usual emissions path for the next 100 years, the resulting 4°C (7°F) of warming may be enough to cause highly reflective stratocumulus clouds over the subtropical and tropical oceans to disintegrate, resulting in an additional 8°C (14°F) of warming, according to research published in February. The resultant “Hothouse Earth” climate, 12°C (22°F) warmer than pre-industrial levels, would be enough to melt all ice on the planet, raise sea levels by over 200 feet over a period of centuries, and produce heat waves too hot for humans to endure outdoors for over half of Earth’s population (as currently distributed.)
Climate Change Bites in the Midwest
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/12/as-climate-change-bites-in-americas-midwest-farmers-are-desperate-to-ring-the-alarm The Guardian- Midwest Agriculture 12-2018
Richard Oswald did not need the latest US government report on the creeping toll of climate change to tell him that farming in the midwest is facing a grim future, and very likely changing forever.
Extreme Canadian Flooding
Guardian- Canada Flooding 4/30/2019
But Canada has done little to prepare for flooding that is likely to become even more common as the planet continues to warm, she said. “Responding to disaster is going to be a lot more expensive than being proactive in vulnerable sites.”
A World Without Clouds
Quanta magazine a World without Clouds 2/25/2019
A state-of-the-art supercomputer simulation indicates that a feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss can push Earth’s climate past a disastrous tipping point in as little as a century.
Heat Wave Grips Japan after Deadly Floods
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/20/heatwave-grips-japan-after-deadly-floods (Climate Change) 7/2018
A heatwave in Japan has killed more than 30 people and complicated recovery efforts after recent flooding. In three prefectures that bore the brunt of the deadly floods and landslides – Hiroshima, Okayama and Ehime – 145 people were hospitalised with heatstroke symptoms on Thursday as temperatures soared above 35C. The tourist hotspot of Kyoto reached a record 39.8C on Thursday and recorded a high of 38.6C on Friday.
