Extreme events of 2011: climate change a major factor in some, but not all
The science of quantifying how climate change changes the odds of extreme weather events like droughts and floods took a major step forward Tuesday with the publication of NOAA's annual summary of the past year's weather. The 2011 State of the Climate report contains a separate peer-reviewed article published in the July issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society titled, Explaining Extreme Events of 2011 From a Climate Perspective. In the paper, a group of scientists led by Peter Stott of the Met Office Centre in the United Kingdom looked at how climate change may have changed the odds of occurrence of some of 2011's notable weather extremes. These kinds of attribution studies require huge amounts of computer time and take many months to do, but the scientists plan to start making this a regular part of the annual NOAA State of the Climate report. Some of their findings for 2011:
- Determining the causes of extreme events remains difficult. While scientists cannot trace specific events to climate change with absolute certainty, new and continued research help scientists understand how the probability of extreme events change in response to global warming.
- La Niña-related heat waves, like that experienced in Texas in 2011, are now 20 times more likely to occur during La Niña years today than La Niña years fifty years ago.
- The UK experienced a very warm November 2011 and a very cold December 2010. In analyzing these two very different events, UK scientists uncovered interesting changes in the odds. Cold Decembers are now half as likely to occur now versus fifty years ago, whereas warm Novembers are now 62 times more likely.
- The devastating 2011 floods in Thailand caused an estimated $45 billion in damage, making it the world's most expensive river flooding disaster in history. The study found, however, that the amount of rain that fell in the catchment area was not very unusual, and that other factors such as human-caused changes to the flood plain and the movement of more people into flood-prone areas were more important in causing the disaster. "Climate change cannot be shown to have played any role in this event," the study concluded, but warned that climate models predict an increase in the probability of extreme precipitation events in the future in the region.
- The deadly drought in East Africa, which killed tens of thousands of people in 2011, was made more likely by warming waters in the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific. While the scientists did not specifically tie the warming of these waters to human-caused global warming, they noted that climate models predict continued warming of these waters in the coming decades, and this will likely "contribute to more frequent East African droughts during the spring and summer."
Figure 1. An SH-60F Sea Hawk helicopter assigned to Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron (HS) 14, flies around the Bangkok area with members of the humanitarian assessment survey team and the Royal Thai Armed Forces to assess the damage caused by the 2011 floods. Image credit: Petty Officer 1st Class Jennifer Villalovos.
Weather on steroids
One interesting aspect of the paper was the scientists' use of the baseball player-steroids analogy to help explain how climate change can increase the odds of extreme weather: "One analogy of the effects of climate change on extreme weather is with a baseball player (or to choose another sport, a cricketer) who starts taking steroids and afterwards hits on average 20% more home runs (or sixes) in a season than he did before (Meehl 2012). For any one of his home runs (sixes) during the years the player was taking steroids, you would not know for sure whether it was caused by steroids or not. But you might be able to attribute his increased number to the steroids. And given that steroids have resulted in a 20% increased chance that any particular swing of the player’s bat results in a home run (or a six), you would be able to make an attribution statement that, all other things being equal, steroid use had increased the probability of that particular occurrence by 20%. The job of the attribution assessment is to distinguish the effects of anthropogenic climate change or some other external factor (steroids in the sporting analogy) from natural variability (e.g., in the baseball analogy, the player’s natural ability to hit home runs or the configuration of a particular stadium)."
Video 1. National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist Dr. Jerry Meehl explains how climate change's impact on extreme weather is like how steroids affect a baseball player.
Jeff Masters
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I already told you, I told have an instagram account. I don't use instagram.
TROPICAL WAVE WILL MOVE
THROUGH THE FLORIDA STRAITS TODAY CROSSING THE CENTRAL GULF FRI
THROUGH LATE SUN THEN WEAKEN LOSING IDENTITY AS IT PASSES
THROUGH THE SW GULF ON MON.
this happens everytime it rains heavy like this?
and iWas so close to making the mistake of living there
Emilia's ADT is above 6 again!
----- Current Analysis -----
Date : 12 JUL 2012 Time : 133000 UTC
Lat : 15:00:00 N Lon : 121:02:05 W
CI# /Pressure/ Vmax
6.3 / 942.6mb/122.2kt
Final T# Adj T# Raw T#
6.2 6.1 6.1
dude... who else could be cjfields799?
No, just when half a foot of rain comes down in a few hrs
i know a c fields, but i doubt its him
nhc wont Care..
that and the fact that flooding in japan is not something we'd only see records of now. japan has been continuously occupied by record-keeping people for quite a long time.
ABC 13 news
I live in louisiana...
so
HOW WOULD I KNOW HIM
Idk...maybe 1 of the other 100,000+ Cody's in this world.
Or if you live on Fondren at 59, and there is a threat of rain. ;)
Houston is terribly flat, and while it drains decently, we've had a good amount of rain the last few days. Add in training storms, and you have a recipe for flooding. The gauge near my house is already crossing 5"... since midnight.
Water doing what it's supposed to do in subdivisions, notice the big houses high and dry, and detention ponds hold all the water
High water in Magnolia, TX
yea
googled this...
There are 48 people in the US/Canada named Cody Fields
your jokin right????
Nice view of Fabio and friends... Good Morning All....
no, i'm not. prior to CU rules applied to individuals and businesses limiting donations. then, unions, individuals and corporations were allowed to endorse candidates and even help organize things for them, but monetary donations were limited to set amounts. media were allowed to endorse candidates then as they are now.
after CU, however, the limits to donating were effectively removed. while technically unions have the ability to donate just as much to their preferred candidates and PACs as the corporate world does, we all know that the amount of cash the corporate world has on hand for this sort of thing dwarfs anything unions could scrape up. it's become completely lopsided.
I'm happy for you guys! It seems lately like there is no medium anymore. It's always either too little rain or too much rain.
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