2010′s Extreme Weather Teaching Us Climate Lessons
A report from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, Climate Risks: Lessons from 2010′s Extreme Weather says the weather of 2010 continues to be chaotic as it has in recent years. The report comes from Dr. Jay Gulledge, the Pew’s Center Senior Scientist and Director of the Science and Impacts Program:
“Nearly the entire northern hemisphere is experiencing a massive heat wave this summer. The first half of 2010 has been the warmest January-July period in the global temperature record, stretching back to 1880. I would be the first to question the significance of this single-year observation, but it fits perfectly into a multiple-decade pattern in which each year between 2000 and 2009 was warmer than the average temperature of the 1990s, and every year in the 1990s was warmer than the average temperature for the 1980s.
“As extreme as the weather has been in the U.S. this year, things are much worse in other countries that are of great interest to the United States: Pakistan and Russia. The current flooding in Pakistan is the worst in that country’s history, with two million people homeless, 20 million affected, more than a million acres of croplands flooded, and signs of an incipient cholera epidemic. Meanwhile, Russia is locked in the worst heat wave and drought in its documented history, with unprecedented high temperatures in Moscow and hundreds of wildfires burning out of control.
“Dr. Gulledge explains the science behind the recent severe weather in Pakistan and Russia and the connection between these events and climate change. He writes that it’s time to put to rest the overly simplistic notion that there will be clear winners and losers in a warmer world.”
Click here to read Dr. Gulledge’s blog post in its entirety.
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