Global warming tied to risk of weather extremes
NEW YORK (AP) - Last year brought a record heat wave to Texas, massive floods in Bangkok and an unusually warm November in England. How much has global warming boosted the chances of events like that? Quite a lot in Texas and England, but apparently not at all in Bangkok, say new analyses released Tuesday.
Scientists can't blame any single weather event on global warming, but they can assess how climate change has altered the odds of such events happening, Tom Peterson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told reporters in a briefing. He's an editor of a report that includes the analyses published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
In the Texas analysis, researchers at Oregon State University and in England noted that the state suffered through record heat last year. It happened during a La Nina weather pattern, the flip side of El Nino. Caused by the cooling of the central Pacific Ocean, La Nina generally cools global temperatures but would be expected to make the southern United States warmer and drier than usual. But beyond that, the scientists wondered, would global warming affect the chances of such an event happening?
To find out, they studied computer climate simulations for La Nina years, focusing on Texas. They compared the outcome of three such years in the 1960s with that of 2008. They used 2008 because their deadline for the study didn't allow enough time to generate thousands of new simulations with fresh data from 2011. The two years were similar in having a La Nina and in amounts of greenhouse gases in the air.
The idea of the study, they said, was to check the likelihood of such a heat wave both before and after there was a lot of man-made climate change, which is primarily from burning fossil fuels like coal and oil.
Their conclusion: Global warming has made such a Texas heat wave about 20 times more likely to happen during a La Nina year.
Using a similar approach, scientists from Oxford University and the British government looked at temperatures in central England. Last November was the second warmest in that region in more than 300 years. And December 2010 was the second coldest in that time.
Their analysis concluded that global warming has made such a warm November about 62 times more likely, and such a cold December just half as likely.
Kevin Trenberth, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research's climate analysis section, said that he found the Britain study to be reasonable, given what he called a flawed climate model. As for the Texas result, he said that given how the study was done, the calculated increase in likelihood "could well be an underestimate."
A third analysis considered unusually severe river flooding last year in central and southern Thailand, including neighborhoods in Bangkok. It found no sign that climate change played a role in that event, noting that the amount of rainfall was not very unusual. The scale of the flooding was influenced more by factors like reservoir operation policies, researchers wrote.
Also at the briefing, NOAA released its report on the climate for 2011, which included several statistics similar to what it had announced earlier.
Last year was the coolest since 2008 in terms of global average temperature, which was about 57.9 degrees Fahrenheit (14.4 degrees Celsius.). But it still remained among the 15 warmest years since records began in the late 1800s, the agency said. It was also above average for the period 1980-2010.
Scientists can't blame any single weather event on global warming, but they can assess how climate change has altered the odds of such events happening, Tom Peterson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told reporters in a briefing. He's an editor of a report that includes the analyses published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
In the Texas analysis, researchers at Oregon State University and in England noted that the state suffered through record heat last year. It happened during a La Nina weather pattern, the flip side of El Nino. Caused by the cooling of the central Pacific Ocean, La Nina generally cools global temperatures but would be expected to make the southern United States warmer and drier than usual. But beyond that, the scientists wondered, would global warming affect the chances of such an event happening?
To find out, they studied computer climate simulations for La Nina years, focusing on Texas. They compared the outcome of three such years in the 1960s with that of 2008. They used 2008 because their deadline for the study didn't allow enough time to generate thousands of new simulations with fresh data from 2011. The two years were similar in having a La Nina and in amounts of greenhouse gases in the air.
The idea of the study, they said, was to check the likelihood of such a heat wave both before and after there was a lot of man-made climate change, which is primarily from burning fossil fuels like coal and oil.
Their conclusion: Global warming has made such a Texas heat wave about 20 times more likely to happen during a La Nina year.
Using a similar approach, scientists from Oxford University and the British government looked at temperatures in central England. Last November was the second warmest in that region in more than 300 years. And December 2010 was the second coldest in that time.
Their analysis concluded that global warming has made such a warm November about 62 times more likely, and such a cold December just half as likely.
Kevin Trenberth, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research's climate analysis section, said that he found the Britain study to be reasonable, given what he called a flawed climate model. As for the Texas result, he said that given how the study was done, the calculated increase in likelihood "could well be an underestimate."
A third analysis considered unusually severe river flooding last year in central and southern Thailand, including neighborhoods in Bangkok. It found no sign that climate change played a role in that event, noting that the amount of rainfall was not very unusual. The scale of the flooding was influenced more by factors like reservoir operation policies, researchers wrote.
Also at the briefing, NOAA released its report on the climate for 2011, which included several statistics similar to what it had announced earlier.
Last year was the coolest since 2008 in terms of global average temperature, which was about 57.9 degrees Fahrenheit (14.4 degrees Celsius.). But it still remained among the 15 warmest years since records began in the late 1800s, the agency said. It was also above average for the period 1980-2010.
Water boarding data to make it conform to the theory is an affront to science.
What utter nonsense.... Â CO-2 is .03% of the upper atmosphere and is a benign gas. Â No climate model accounts for sun cycles and cloud cover... Â The very notion that mankind is changing the climate is patently absurd.Â
@Greg Halvorson Only to the patently absurd...
@Greg Halvorson I'm sure your research is much more detailed and accurate there, Professor, so why don't you share your data and subject it to political ridicule just they have?
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@archangels007 Well I made moonshine yesterday. :)
Global warming? Hoot! Why that's just a myth! It's made up by them librils trying to raise my taxes! What do those scientists know? They disagree! I saw it on the teevee! Besides they're all sucking at the big government teat so of course they say there's global warming. It's all about my taxes!
 @realoldguy LOL
Why can't they just call it what it is? Natural weather patterns that have existed since the dawn of time. We aren't changing them, we have so little effect on them that this entire discussion is fantasy!
@Owt_Raged So NASA had it wrong??
The ozone hole is a region of exceptionally depleted ozone in the stratosphere over the Antarctic that occurs at the beginning of Southern Hemisphere spring (August) and typically reaches its maximum extent in late September or early October. The ozone hole then begins to break up, with the area of depleted ozone dissipating throughout the southern mid latitudes, including parts of southern Africa, South America,North America, Australia, and New Zealand. The resulting increase in UV radiation in those areas can potentially affect human health as well as plant and animal species and wild fires.
@Owt_Raged That would be false. The handful of people saying otherwise have books to sell you and talk radio shows to frequent. Similarly, some people believe the ancients were visited by extraterrestrials. According to all kin of scientists, every glacier in the world that doesn't have a toe in the ocean is receding. (Awesome archeological discoveries in northern Europe.) China is already ahead of us in acknowledging and addressing them. The values of carbon in the atmosphere exceed that of the last 800,000 years, and directly correlate not with volcanoes, coal, agriculture or deforestation, but the rise of fossil fuels. Which means if we address that we don't have to worry so much about the rest.
 @Dienekes4160 I applaud your effort to educate here but sadly, you can lead a climate change denier to facts but you can't make them accept it lol. They won't accept that human actions are accelerating Earth's mood swings.
 @Dienekes4160 What do you think caused the last ice age to end? Today's weather records go back a mere 40 years. They didn't begin tracking any of this until the mid to late 70's. Considering the age of our planet, that's a blink of an eye and hardly enough information to base a THEORY on.
There are no measurements of carbon content in the atmosphere from 800,00 years ago, there is only residual traces in rocks, which no one can replicate with any accuracy in a lab.
You do realize that hundreds of thousands of years ago, there was a lot more land mass than there is now.Â
I suppose you believe that the polar bears are dying off too? Even though over the last 3 years record numbers of cubs have been born.
 @Owt_Raged Actually...C02 can be traced back to almost 800,000 years using glacier cores. Learned this from a teacher who knows a lot about glaciers.
"Their analysis concluded that global warming has made such a warm November about 62 times more likely, and such a cold December just half as likely."
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Global warming makes it 62 times more likely that such weather will occur during months in which the sun shines somewhere on the face of the earth!
Double talk is what this is, pure and simple, it is double talk.
@lee986321 I'm sure you've done a lot of climate research on all of the approved internet sites and talk radio programs.
Scientists can't blame any single weather event on global warming
Last year was the coolest since 2008 in terms of global average temperature, which was about 57.9 degrees Fahrenheit (14.4 degrees Celsius.). But it still remained among the 15 warmest years since records began in the late 1800s, the agency said. It was also above average for the period 1980-2010
Sounds like conflicting data to me. Can't have it both ways people. Sounds like Natural and normal events if you ask me..
 @lee986321 Be prepared to be attacked.  The left has invested billions in this pseudoscience and stories like this piece of BS keep popping up in order to fan the dwindling flames.  They want it both ways because they can then do stupid stuff like tear down dams that generate clean power and already exist.
@lee986321 Carbon emissions in glacial ice samples in the polar regions indicate an 800,000-year high, and all of the glaciers are receding. Last year I flew a Cessna over the Yukon and Alaska, and you can see where ancient glaciers have disappeared. But you don't need to do that. Look at the glaciers on Mt. Hood.
"Scientists can't blame any single weather event on global warming"
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But they can keep trying because we all know if you say it loud enough and enough times it becomes fact.............
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I hope all people involved in this scam get booted out of the scientific community.
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Of cause they would say that.....anything to support their global warming theories.
@kahn As opposed to your college-reject talk radio web-conspiracy theories? NASA has robots on Mars.. When climate-change critics have robots on Mars, and satellites orbiting the sun, I'll give a squat what they think. Plain and simple.
 @Dienekes4160  @kahn Wow Dienekes4160, you can fly a plane, you must be right.  Thanks for sharing what you have seen from your little narrow perch whereever you live.  Here, have some more grape koolaid and go to sleep...............
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