Sunday 8 July 2012

This Is Just The Beginning

Evidence, if needed, that climate change is pummeling the World this summer is born out from the statistics regarding June which saw all sorts of extreme weather sending records tumbling.
To some the link between extreme weather and climate change is just not joined together in their minds or more dangerously, ignored but The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who track the weather data in the United States reported that the spring of 2012 'marked the largest temperature departure from average of any season on record for the contiguous United States.'
Dr. Jeff Masters, one of the meteorologists who is not afraid to put his head above the parapet, has frequently made the connection between extreme weather and climate change and cites the amazing statistic that 'across the entire Continental U.S., 72 percent of the land area was classified as being in dry or drought conditions and we’re going to be seeing a lot more weather like this, a lot more impacts like we’re seeing...this is just the beginning.'
Last month alone America saw one of the most powerful windstorms on record sweep across the country from Illinois to Virginia killing 26 and leaving up to 3.5 million without power. Nevada saw a record June high temperature of 90° and a record low of 24° with snow reported for the first time in June since weather records began.
Record amounts of rainfall fell in 24hrs in Maine, Minnesota and Florida but although America, ironically one of the worst polluters of the atmosphere, has been battered by extreme weather, records have tumbled all over the World.
The coldest temperature ever measured in the northern hemisphere during June was -29.9°C (-21.8°F) at Summit, Greenland while that same month a record June high for the southern hemisphere was reached at 38.7°C in Brazil.
A mountain top weather station in Austria measured its warmest temperature on record when 15.3°C was measured on June 30th while Zimbabwe measured an all time low with temperatures dipping to 1.6°C.
A heat wave in the Middle East during the first week of June resulted in the all-time heat record for Saudi Arabia when the temperature hit 51.4°C but in Australia the record minimum temperature for June werr observed at -11.0°C.
At the bottom of the Earth in Antarctica, the coldest ever temperature in the southern hemisphere and the world during June was -81.4°C (-114.5°F) recorded at Vostok on June 11th.
The warning words of Dr Masters that 'this is just the beginning' should be stamped on the forehead of every person who denies that the climate is changing and extreme weather is us reaping what we have been sowing for the past century and a half.

5 comments:

Nog said...

"At the bottom of the Earth in Antarctica, the coldest ever temperature in the southern hemisphere and the world during June was -81.4°C (-114.5°F) recorded at Vostok on June 11th."

That actually makes perfect sense and is entirely unremarkable. June isn't a summer month in Antarctica, it's Winter...

-Nog

Lucy said...

The coldest ever June day anywhere in the Southern hemisphere isn't remarkable??

Nog said...

That it's a record is somewhat remarkable, but that it is hellishly frigid in Antarctica in June isn't.

Anonymous said...

Lucy are you ignoring the study out of Finland. The one using semi-fossilzed trees. The one that said estimates of earth temps circa 1ad were wrong. The one that earth has been in 2000 year cooling period and is just returning to prior norms. Just asking

Q

Lucy said...

I didn't know about that q but i have just looked it up.

Rings in fossilised pine trees have proven that the world was much warmer than previously thought – and the earth has been slowly COOLING for 2,000 years.

I will look a bit more into it. I know the ice cores go back hundreds of thouands of years did show some fluctualtions in warming and cooling periods so it may be a case of where you start from.