http://www.kansascity.com/2011/02/01/2626515/some-scientists-believe-extreme.html
Some scientists believe extreme weather events becoming the norm
By KAREN DILLON
The Kansas City Star
Just in December, some forecasters thought our mild winter would continue and we'd cruise through with only a handful of storms.
So what happened?
Climate change, according to many scientists.
Not a sudden change in the climate but a gradual change bringing us a pattern of extreme weather events. And although the atmosphere is warming, that doesn't mean snowstorms will stop anytime soon, said Charles Rice, a Kansas State University professor and climate change author.
That's because the warmer air means more moisture, in the short term at least.
"Climate change doesn't mean you are not going to have cold spells and snow," Rice said Tuesday. "It's a change in the weather pattern, the intensity of a weather event - all those come into play."
Indeed, scientists said extreme weather events were becoming the norm.
The East Coast got slammed by storms both last year and this winter, and Kansas City has endured its second heavy snow in two weeks.
Jay Gulledge, senior scientist at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, recently described Pakistan and Russia as two countries that suffered the most extreme weather events in 2010.
Flooding in Pakistan was the worst in that country's history and left 2 million people homeless, 20 million more who were affected and more than a million acres of croplands flooded. The United Nation called the disaster the "world's worst humanitarian disaster in recent history."
Russia faced its worst heat wave and drought since records there have been kept. The drought and fires have destroyed a quarter of Russia's crops.
Last year's global temperatures tied 1998 for the warmest since records began being kept 150 years ago. And scientists are predicting the next 10 years will be hotter.
A few cold storms don't undermine the theory of climate change, said Rice and Tom Peterson, chief scientist at the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration's National Climatic Data Center.
A weather event is just that - a weather event, they said. Climate is the prevailing weather of a region over time.
Some experts suggest the earth's temperatures actually are cooling.
John L. Casey, director of the Space and Science Research Center in Orlando, where the temperature was 81 degrees Tuesday, said he was trying to convince the government and scientists that global warming had ended and that we were facing much cooler temperatures for the next 20 or 30 years.
Using NASA data, he called his theory "solar hibernation" and said this cooling period with the sun would last about 20 to 30 years and occurred every 206 years.
Like climate change, solar hibernation could have a devastating effect on the way we live.
"There is no one who can stop what is happening with the sun," Casey said Tuesday. "The cold will be so extreme. If it is at all like the last time, we will lose much of our grain crops in the U.S."
To reach Karen Dillon, call 916-234-4430 or send e-mail to kdillon@kcstar.com.
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