Claudette arrived in Texas this week, coming ashore as a weak hurricane. She is not Andrew or Camille, one of those storms that’s remembered for a generation; but she arrives at a turning point in weather history.
Earlier this month, the World Meteorological Organization announced that temperatures and storms across the planet are becoming more extreme than ever. The WMO is a UN agency, comprising the weather services of 185 nations. Unlike the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the WMO is not in the business of monitoring greenhouse gases and global warming. Usually the WMO just releases a group of weather statistics at the end of the year. A mid-year announcement on extreme weather trends is unprecedented for this stodgy bunch of scientists, but then, so is the weather.
It’s no news to anyone in New England that the winter just past was extraordinarily long and cold and now that summer is here, the thermometer is swinging wildly in the other direction. Switzerland, which has kept weather records for 250 years, experienced it hottest June ever. Daytime temperatures in Geneva have not fallen below the mid-70s since late May. France also recorded its hottest June ever, 10 to 15 degrees above average, with several spikes over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
The pre-monsoon heatwave in India saw temperatures of over 110 degrees and at least 1,400 deaths have been attributed to the heat. Storms and flooding killed 300 people in Sri Lanka.
There were more tornadoes in the U.S. in May than in any month in our recorded history and we didn’t just break the record, we blew it away. There were 562 tornadoes in May; the old record, set in June 1992, was 399.
Several states in the U.S. Midwest are flooded; northern Italy is seized with drought. Open your local newspaper and turn to the weather map. Red, orange, brown – whichever color your paper chooses to denote high temperatures, I’m sure it’s painted all over the national map.
What’s going on? What’s going on is exactly what scientists who study global warming have been predicting for 20 years; it’s exactly what computer models of global warming have been predicting would happen: more extreme temperatures at both ends of the thermometer, more frequent and violent storms. It’s going to get worse.
The World Meteorological Organization is primarily a record-keeping body. Their records show the global average surface temperature has been increasing since 1861, about 20 years after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Historical evidence has shown the planet warms and cools on its own, so maybe it’s just a coincidence, but maybe it’s not. The WMO says the increase in temperature in the 20th century was the greatest for the entire millennium and the trend since 1976 is three times hotter than for the 20th century as a whole.
Nineteen-ninety-two – the year that used to have tornado record – also saw the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where the Framework Convention on Climate Change was drafted. It called for emissions of greenhouse gases to be reduced by the year 2000. It didn’t happen. George H.W. Bush, who was at Rio, wanted nothing to do with reducing greenhouse gases. As it turned out, neither did Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Gore wrote a book in ’92 calling global warming the most significant issue facing the human race. Now that he has no office to run for, you don’t hear much from Al Gore on the most significant issue facing the human race.
George Bush, Junior and Dick Cheney are, of course, devils incarnate when it comes to climate change. They don’t care who suffers from heat or cold or storms or floods or – war, for that matter – so long as their oil buddies keep on drilling and pumping.
May 2003 posted the highest average global land temperatures in recorded history. The 10 hottest years on record have all been since 1990. Two-thousand-three looks like it will set a new record. The unstable world of climate change is no longer a model. It’s reality.
Reality Bites
Claudette arrived in Texas this week, coming ashore as a weak hurricane. She is not Andrew or Camille, one of those storms that’s remembered for a generation; but she arrives at a turning point in weather history.
Earlier this month, the World Meteorological Organization announced that temperatures and storms across the planet are becoming more extreme than ever. The WMO is a UN agency, comprising the weather services of 185 nations. Unlike the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the WMO is not in the business of monitoring greenhouse gases and global warming. Usually the WMO just releases a group of weather statistics at the end of the year. A mid-year announcement on extreme weather trends is unprecedented for this stodgy bunch of scientists, but then, so is the weather.
It’s no news to anyone in New England that the winter just past was extraordinarily long and cold and now that summer is here, the thermometer is swinging wildly in the other direction. Switzerland, which has kept weather records for 250 years, experienced it hottest June ever. Daytime temperatures in Geneva have not fallen below the mid-70s since late May. France also recorded its hottest June ever, 10 to 15 degrees above average, with several spikes over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
The pre-monsoon heatwave in India saw temperatures of over 110 degrees and at least 1,400 deaths have been attributed to the heat. Storms and flooding killed 300 people in Sri Lanka.
There were more tornadoes in the U.S. in May than in any month in our recorded history and we didn’t just break the record, we blew it away. There were 562 tornadoes in May; the old record, set in June 1992, was 399.
Several states in the U.S. Midwest are flooded; northern Italy is seized with drought. Open your local newspaper and turn to the weather map. Red, orange, brown – whichever color your paper chooses to denote high temperatures, I’m sure it’s painted all over the national map.
What’s going on? What’s going on is exactly what scientists who study global warming have been predicting for 20 years; it’s exactly what computer models of global warming have been predicting would happen: more extreme temperatures at both ends of the thermometer, more frequent and violent storms. It’s going to get worse.
The World Meteorological Organization is primarily a record-keeping body. Their records show the global average surface temperature has been increasing since 1861, about 20 years after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Historical evidence has shown the planet warms and cools on its own, so maybe it’s just a coincidence, but maybe it’s not. The WMO says the increase in temperature in the 20th century was the greatest for the entire millennium and the trend since 1976 is three times hotter than for the 20th century as a whole.
Nineteen-ninety-two – the year that used to have tornado record – also saw the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where the Framework Convention on Climate Change was drafted. It called for emissions of greenhouse gases to be reduced by the year 2000. It didn’t happen. George H.W. Bush, who was at Rio, wanted nothing to do with reducing greenhouse gases. As it turned out, neither did Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Gore wrote a book in ’92 calling global warming the most significant issue facing the human race. Now that he has no office to run for, you don’t hear much from Al Gore on the most significant issue facing the human race.
George Bush, Junior and Dick Cheney are, of course, devils incarnate when it comes to climate change. They don’t care who suffers from heat or cold or storms or floods or – war, for that matter – so long as their oil buddies keep on drilling and pumping.
May 2003 posted the highest average global land temperatures in recorded history. The 10 hottest years on record have all been since 1990. Two-thousand-three looks like it will set a new record. The unstable world of climate change is no longer a model. It’s reality.