Nation's weather extremes may be the new normal. LA Times

[sce56]

A record-setting winter in much of the country has been followed by more records: tornadoes, flooding, drought and heat. Climate change is largely to blame, scientists say.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-extreme-weather-20110824,0,1208505,full.story


Residents in Guthrie, Okla., salvage belongings after a tornado in May. The previous month, Oklahoma reported a record number of tornadoes, 50. (Sean Mullins, Associated Press / August 24, 2011)

By Julie Cart and Hailey Branson-Potts, Los Angeles Times

August 23, 2011, 11:07 p.m.
Reporting from Los Angeles and Marshall, Okla.—
Oklahomans are accustomed to cruel climate. Frigid winters and searing summers are often made more unbearable by scouring winds. But even by Oklahoma standards, it's been a year of whipsaw weather.

February was so cold — with the wind chill it felt like 16 below — that Tim Gillard installed a door in the long hallway of his home in the small farming town of Marshall, walling off three rooms to more affordably heat the rest of the house. Now, in this summer's unrelenting heat, his family huddles in the air conditioning behind that same door.

<snip>
In addition to hundreds of deaths from cold and heat and tornadoes, the national economic toll for extreme weather so far this year is estimated at $35 billion, more than five times the average annual loss.

And, climatologists warn, get used to it.

The year has been so wild that Gary McManus has given up keeping track of the weather records set in Oklahoma. Begrudgingly, McManus, the associate state climatologist, briskly rattled off a few:

—The all-time low temperature (31 degrees below zero).

—Greatest 24-hour snowfall total (27 inches).

—Most tornadoes in one month (50 in April).

There's been no measurable rain in the western half of the state since October. The 11-month period ending in August was the driest such period statewide since records were first kept in 1895. McManus said this year's back-to-back weather calamities were "out of the realm of your imagining. It's not just that temperatures are above normal, it's that it's above normal for so many months in a row." And this is the state that bore the brunt of the Dust Bowl.

And the usual climate change deniers are in the comments section!

[kestrel91316]

1. But lots of regular DUers keep telling us that weather and climate are NOT related!!

[sce56]

2. Well since you are in the 91316 area you know that this past year was full of surprises

The Pacific Ocean had a La Niña event that did not act the way it normally does;

Kirstie Hettinga
By Kirstie Hettinga, AccuWeather.com Staff Writer
Aug 17, 2010; 1:01 PM ET

Thanks to a strong La Nina weather pattern, the West Coast is likely to see winter conditions opposite of what it endured last year.

According to AccuWeather.com Expert Senior Meteorologist and West Coast resident Ken Clark said, "The difference going into this winter, is going to be totally on the opposite side, last year we had a moderate El Nino going through the winter, that drastically changed this spring to a La Nina pattern."

Clark said that the La Nina will create drier and warmer weather in the Southwest.



Fast forward to winter

December 21, 2010 | 4:42 PM | By Craig Miller


FILED UNDER: Water, La Nina, Oceans, weather

Pacific ocean conditions that often portend a dry winter sure haven’t so far.

Scientists like to joke that “climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.” The relatively soggy winter so far is a classic example of that.




Satellite image from last weekend, showing storm systems marching across the Pacific toward California. (Image: NASA)

A closely-watched oscillation in the Pacific is in the La Niña phase this winter, creating colder-than-normal surface temperatures and distorting weather patterns. Usually a La Niña means drier-than-normal conditions for Southern California in particular and often for northern parts of the state as well. Not this year–at least not so far. The rain set multiple records over the weekend. Los Angeles has had a third of its average annual rainfall in a week. So what’s going on?

Kevin Trenberth, who heads the Climate Analysis Section at the Nat’l Center for Atmospheric Research, says lately there’s a monkey wrench in the works, in the form of a “blocking anticyclone.”

“In La Niña conditions, which is what we have now, the main storms that come into North America come barreling into Washington, Oregon and British Columbia more,” Trenberth told me in a phone interview.

But lately a persistent region of high pressure in the north Pacific is diverting storms south, into California. Trenberth says: “There’s a crapshoot or a random component to it, if you like, in the more northern latitudes, that’s adding some extra flavor to what’s going on, I think.


http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1831





by Gareth on June 26, 2011

The extraordinary sequence of extreme weather events during the last 18 months is probably the worst run of natural disasters since 1816, when a huge volcanic eruption at Mt Tambora cooled the earth enough to cause the famous “year without a summer“, according to a powerful blog post by Weather Underground founder Jeff Masters. He runs through the list, giving details of each:

Earth’s hottest year on record
Most extreme winter Arctic atmospheric circulation on record
Arctic sea ice: lowest volume on record, 3rd lowest extent
Record melting in Greenland, and a massive calving event
Second most extreme shift from El Niño to La Niña
Second worst coral bleaching year
Wettest year over land
Amazon rainforest experiences its 2nd 100-year drought in 5 years
Global tropical cyclone activity lowest on record
A hyperactive Atlantic hurricane season: 3rd busiest on record
A rare tropical storm in the South Atlantic
Strongest storm in Southwestern U.S. history
Strongest non-coastal storm in U.S. history
Weakest and latest-ending East Asian monsoon on record
No monsoon depressions in India’s Southwest Monsoon for 2nd time in 134 years
The Pakistani flood: most expensive natural disaster in Pakistan’s history
The Russian heat wave and drought: deadliest heat wave in human history
Record rains trigger Australia’s most expensive natural disaster in history
Heaviest rains on record trigger Colombia’s worst flooding disaster in history
Tennessee’s 1-in-1000 year flood kills 30, does $2.4 billion in damage

Masters argument is straightforward:

…it is highly improbable that the remarkable extreme weather events of 2010 and 2011 could have all happened in such a short period of time without some powerful climate-altering force at work. The best science we have right now maintains that human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases like CO2 are the most likely cause of such a climate-altering force.

There’s more heat accumulating in the system, and more water vapour in the atmosphere to drive weather events.

A naturally extreme year, when embedded in such a changed atmosphere, is capable of causing dramatic, unprecedented extremes like we observed during 2010 and 2011. That’s the best theory I have to explain the extreme weather events of 2010 and 2011–natural extremes of El Niño, La Niña and other natural weather patterns combined with significant shifts in atmospheric circulation and the extra heat and atmospheric moisture due to human-caused climate change to create an extraordinary period of extreme weather.

So much for the normal weather models working!

[kestrel91316]

3. Hey, you're preaching to the choir. I have been saying for over a decade

that the models are broken. Climate change/global warming has made it impossible to make accurate predictions about weather patterns.

[Uncle Joe]

4. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, sce.

[Pooka Fey]

5. K&R

[LongTomH]

6. K&R A definite K&R

Thanks for posting this!!!!!:kick: