Tag Archives: weather-extremes

Hothouse Mass Casualties Strike Egypt, Heatwave Hospitalizes Thousands in Japan

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#Global Warming–#Weather Extremes

Back in May, official temperatures soared to 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) as humidity levels spiked in Cairo, Egypt. The early high heat and humidity sparked anxiety among residents worrying over the coming summer. Public complaints about official temperatures being lower than actual measures were widespread among a populace vulnerable to heat exposure in a notoriously hot region of the world suffering the ongoing impacts of human-forced warming. The below video captures some of the sentiment of a few months ago, when concern that record global temperatures in the range of 1 degree Celsius above 1880s averages might result in harm to Egypt’s populace was widespread and growing.”   Sourced through Scoop.it from: robertscribbler.com GR:  This summer’s deaths are sad harbingers of escalating weather extremes as the planet warms and ocean evaporation increases.  Urban heat islands intensify the extremes.  This bad for humans, pets, and factory-farmed animals, but for now, wild animals outside cities will not suffer as much.  Of course, other human impacts are killing wild animals and plants.  Increased transpiration during heat waves will hurry our innocent fellow creatures along the road to extinction.

How This Year’s El Niño Compares to the Past

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“It was the winter of 1997-1998 when the granddaddy of El Niños—the one by which all other El Niños are judged—vaulted the climate term to household name status. It had such a noticeable impact on U.S. weather that it appeared everywhere from news coverage of mudslides in Southern California to Chris Farley’s legendary sketch on “Saturday Night Live.” Basically, it was the “polar vortex” of the late ‘90s.

“January and February 1998 were the wettest and warmest first two months to a year for the contiguous U.S. in the 104-year record at that time, according to NOAA. The position of the jet stream meant that some northern states saw temperatures up to 15 degrees above normal and both the Southeast and Southern California were awash in a series of storms.” –Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.scientificamerican.com

GR:  This year’s El Nino is going to be as strong or stronger than 97-98. Strong El Ninos can produce strong weather events. But when, where, and even if are all uncertain.

Global Warming, Snow Cover, and Weather Extremes

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GR: The video’s explanation of the changes producing more extreme weather is excellent.

greenman3610's avatarThis is Not Cool

Above, I chatted with Jennifer Francis of Rutgers back in the spring of 2013, and the topic turned briefly to  snowcover in a warming world, and some interesting paradoxes.

To kick this off, here are some graphs from the Rutgers Snow Lab. Can you spot the global warming effects?

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Listen to Francis, above, read this excerpt from Kevin Trenberth’s recent piece on this topic – and look again.

Kevin Trenberth in The Conversation:

There is a saying that it can be “too cold to snow”! Of course, this is a myth but it has a basis in fact because the atmosphere gets freeze dried when it is very cold. That’s because the amount of moisture the atmosphere can hold depends very strongly on temperature. Under cold conditions, the snow is likely to consist of very small crystals and sometimes is very light and fluffy and like “diamond dust”.

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Buffalo’s 2014 November Snowstorm

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GR:  As extreme weather events become more common, they will become more extreme, guaranteeing more exciting weather news cycles than ever before.

“Earlier this week something rather interesting and disturbing happened to the Jet Stream.

“In the extreme northwest, a large heat pool over Alaska and the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean kept temperatures in the range of 10 to 36 degrees Fahrenheit above average. To the south, a powerful super typhoon, gorged on Pacific Ocean waters ranging from 1-2 C hotter than normal, raced into the extratropical region of the Central and Northern Pacific. And to the north and east, the cold core that normally resides over the North Pole began slipping south.

“As the supertyphoon’s remnants hit the warm weakness in the Jet Stream near Alaska, it bombed out into a monster extra-tropical low. This kicked warm air even further north, causing a whiplash in the Jet and driving the cold air core south over Canada.

“Cold air rocketed down over the relatively warm waters of the Great Lakes. These waters, having soaked up the heat of yet another hotter than average American summer, squeezed an epic amount of moisture and storm feeding energy out into the air. Over the past two days, the result was as kind of thundersnow storm that parked itself in one location, dumping foot after foot of snow. By the time the final tally was counted this morning, as much as 8 feet had fallen over Buffalo New York. A record amount never before seen in so short a time span and yet so far ahead of winter.”

Source: robertscribbler.wordpress.com

Read the full article to see why flooding is expected early next week.