Climatology: anomalous weather only recently?

[Dan Robinson]

One of the things that I've noticed more and more is that weird, bizarre, rare, unusual weather events seem to actually be 'normal'. That is, deviations from climate seem to be a regular occurance, and they are surprising me less and less when they happen.

8 years ago, for instance, a thunderstorm in the winter in the northeast USA seemed like a front-page news story. Now I see that they are not rare at all. They happen and have happened most every year within a 100-mile radius of where I live. Devastating floods happen somewhere in my region every 2 to 3 years. Even major (IE, newsworthy) flooding happens several times a year. Each year seems to bring its share of 'surprising' rarities. "10 days in May" of 2003, last year's tornado bonanzas, this year's hurricanes, droughts, severe weather outbreaks, floods, winter storms, etc.

So, are we really entering into a historical maximum of rare weather events, or does climatology indicate that the short-term 'rare' is actually the long-term 'common'? Has there ever been a long continuous time period when the weather was generally 'normal' with little or no anomalies?

 

[B Ozanne]

The only thing normal about the mid-latitudes is that the weather is rarely normal. We live in a transition zone between the tropics and the artic where warm and cold are are constantly clashing. Meanwhile, the media would have us believe "the end" is coming....but this is fear driven not fact based.

 

[Robert Dewey]

One of the strangest things I seen was in an ice storm in 2003... The temperature was around 30F, and a light to moderate precipitation (rain/freezing rain) shield was moving northeast. Then, out ahead of it, several heavy looking thundestorms developed and raced northeast, hitting me directly. There was TONS of lightning and VERY heavy downpours, all with subfreezing air. We received around 0.25 inches of rain in about 15 minutes... The saving grace was that the drops were huge and it was raining heavily, and didn't stick much to the trees - but the roads were a mess. In total, we got around 0.50 inches of ice that night... Only to repeat with another 0.50 to 1.00 inch the very next night...

 

[Andrew Khan]

My take on this is that, weather depends on the situations around you, and it will be worse some years, than other specifically. But still, the fact remains (To Some People, ‘Allegedly’), that we are inflicting this upon ourselves…by polluting the environment and atmosphere, we are causing anomalous conditions, which lead to disturbances, and then lead to one ‘rare’ event, or another. I will fight to the end with regards to Global Warming, and will not ever change my mind, about certain factors being affected by it. The problem is, there is anomalism going on in the environment…more so than perhaps 60-70 years back, and is concededly creating horrendous condition ‘regularly’. Here in east TN, we have been under a TERRIBLE drought, and rain deprivation for 2-3/12 months. Not to say, there aren’t other ‘natural things causing them, however. I do believe this type of ‘rare’ events will progressively get worse in the following years to come.

 

[jaybarnsmith]

I think a lot of it is media hype and such. If you realize that a lot of the 'extreme' weather we have had lately isn't all that extreme. Sure there have been droughts and higher than average temperatures/precipitation/etc. but there have been worse droughts and higher temperatures in the 'distant' past. The other thing one has to realize is that weather records only go back about 200 years and detailed records are likely only in the past 30-50 years. Now consider that human history goes back >2,000 years and one starts to realize that we have no clue about long term weather patterns or what 'extreme' really is. People who jump to conclusions that it is human caused or such are just fools caught in the media hype. You don't make money telling people today was just another average day on the news.

 

[Mikey Gribble]

IMO the only change has been with communications. We now know about every notable weather event (due to the internet, TV, and radio) as soon as it happens and we are ignorant enough to believe that these things didn't happen 50 years ago because we didn't hear about it as often. We also ignore the fact that the earth's climate has always gone through long term cycles of warming and cooling. Yet some people are dead set on the idea that the small increase in average temperature must be a result of burning fossil fuels even though this same thing happened long before we ever used fossil fuels. It doesn't make any sense to me and no I don't think we are reaching a maximum in rare weather events.

 

[Scott Olson]

I don't necessairly think any of the recent Hurricanes or storms are releated. (Or lack of storms). A tornado could hit a city four times in a row in four consecutive days and not hit the city again for another five hundred years.

 

[Andrew Khan]

It has to do a great deal with 'chance'...as Scott says, but I do think there is the factor of media here..

 

[Karen Politte]

"Normal" anything is only a factor made of of both extremes.

KR

 

[Michael P. Morris]

The people who say that the recent events can be attributed to global warming apparently have no historical perspective. The 1900 Galveston hurricane killed 8000 people, and this was before the car became widespread and began to contribute to global warming. There have been really bad hurricanes and tornado outbreaks in the past (i.e. pre-WW2) that, as Mike mentioned, went unreported due to lack of communication systems. In addition, we have only been collecting climo data for the last ~50 years so what is to say that what we are experiencing now is actually abnormal?

 

[Andrew Khan]

Originally posted by Michael P. Morris
The people who say that the recent events can be attributed to global warming apparently have no historical perspective. The 1900 Galveston hurricane killed 8000 people, and this was before the car became widespread and began to contribute to global warming. There have been really bad hurricanes and tornado outbreaks in the past (i.e. pre-WW2) that, as Mike mentioned, went unreported due to lack of communication systems. In addition, we have only been collecting climo data for the last ~50 years so what is to say that what we are experiencing now is actually abnormal?

The Global Warming Phenomenon is real, and needs to be taken seriously, because it a matter of time 80-90 years...life could change drastically...as if it hasn't already...and global warming is a very slow process...but will affect all of us, perhaps our ancestors later on….(Again, allegedly to some people)

 

[Robert Dewey]

Originally posted by Andrew Khan+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Andrew Khan)</div>

<!--QuoteBegin-Michael P. Morris

The people who say that the recent events can be attributed to global warming apparently have no historical perspective. The 1900 Galveston hurricane killed 8000 people, and this was before the car became widespread and began to contribute to global warming. There have been really bad hurricanes and tornado outbreaks in the past (i.e. pre-WW2) that, as Mike mentioned, went unreported due to lack of communication systems. In addition, we have only been collecting climo data for the last ~50 years so what is to say that what we are experiencing now is actually abnormal?

The Global Warming Phenomenon is real, and needs to be taken seriously, because it a matter of time 80-90 years...life could change drastically...as if it hasn't already...and global warming is a very slow process...but will affect all of us, perhaps our ancestors later on….(Again, allegedly to some people)[/b]

How is there enough data to prove that the earth doesn't have large scale climate changes every 10 million years or so? Perhaps there ARE significant climate changes, there isn't enough data to say definitively yes OR no.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

Originally posted by rdewey

How is there enough data to prove that the earth doesn't have large scale climate changes every 10 million years or so? Perhaps there ARE significant climate changes, there isn't enough data to say definitively yes OR no.

I'm not passing the recent events off as being a result of global warming, but I do believe in global warming. Almost all evidence supports the idea that the world has been warming (in the past 50-100 years) MUCH faster than anything we have documented in the past. Sure, that relies heavily on proxy data (ice core samples, tree rings, etc), but I think global warming is becoming increasingly accepted within the scientific community. Read the IPCC report, or other reports, and it's tough to think that global warming isn't occuring. I didn't give it much thought a few years ago, attributing it off as "natural" occurrences. However, now that Ive learned more about the supporting data, etc, I can't see how global warming isn't being affected by human activities. It's not just that the atmosphere is warming, which was probably going to happen regardless of human events since we're in a natural warming cycle right now anyway. The main argument lies in the rate at which the temperature is icnreasing, and the too-close-to-be-coincidental start of the very rapid rise in average global temperatures near the same time of the Industrial Revolution.

 

[Andrew Khan]

There is not. Simply put. There is enough evidence to gather propoganda like this, however, and seems to be what a lot of people believe....it could be what you said though...nothing is 100% sure...

 

[Mike Smith]

It is actually very easy to believe global warming is not occurring if global warming is defined as mankind unnaturally warming the atmosphere.

1) There are at least four scientific articles at space.com about how the climate of Mars is warming rapidly. Hmmm. What could cause the earth and Mars to warm in parallel?

2) There are at least three scientific studies by the well-respected Max Planc Institute that the sun is burning more brightly in recent years.

3) In June, the British House of Lords published an extremely well-researched report highly critical of the IPCC, charging that politics was influencing their results. The well-respected Dr. Chris Landsea resigned from IPCC earlier this year because he believed politics, rather than good science, was influencing their results.

4) The computer models that are used to forecast global warming through 2050 and 2100 CONSISTENTLY overforecast the amount of warming in "pastcast" mode (i.e., 1900-2000 and 1979-2000). They also do not accurately reproduce the global cooling observed from about 1948 to about 1978.

5) The degradation of the NWS cooperative observer network is a major scientific scandal. The placement of "baseline" thermometers next to air conditioners, industrial vents, etc., in the early 1990's MAY contribute global warming through faulty surface temperature readings. See Roger Pielke, Sr's paper in BAMS.

Yes, the preponderance (not all) of the evidence says the earth is getting warmer. The evidence that humans are the primary cause is very weak.