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This Blog is designed to be a Diary of Events illustrating Global Climate Change, and where it will lead.

Commentary is encouraged, but this Blog is not intended for discussion on the Validity of Climate Change.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

It isn't Global Warming, it's Global Weirding...

For all your friends who say "We can adapt", How do we "adapt" to this?

From the Wonkroom:

NORTH AMERICA Weeks after some of the strongest snowstorms ever to hit the East Coast, another powerful winter storm drenches the Northeast, kills eight people, and knocks out power for hundreds of thousands. Record warmth in North Dakota and Minnesota threatens another year of catastrophic flooding.
(They're forecasting "The Flood of the Decade", maybe of the Century - the fourth consecutive "Flood of the Decade", and the fourth "Flood of the Century" since 1989... Time passes faster than it used to, apparently.)

SOUTH AMERICA Tropical Storm 90Q, also known as Anita, the “second known tropical cyclone to form in the cooler South Atlantic Ocean,” is circling off the Argentina coast. The first known South Atlantic tropical cyclone, Catarina, was in 2004. (A whole new experience for Argentinians)

EUROPE “Hurricane-force winds and widespread flooding battered vast swathes of western France and left more than a million homes without power,” as the storm named Xynthia “killed at least 62 people across western Europe” in Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, and Germany en route to Scandinavia.

AFRICA The death toll has risen to 36 people “and nearly 38,000 left homeless when tropical storm Hubert smashed into Madagascar this week.” Last month, stormy weather wreaked havoc across Egypt, as twenty-foot waves crashed into Alexandria and a hail storm killed four people in Cairo.

ASIA “A severe sandstorm hit Xinjiang’s Hotan Prefecture in northwest China on Friday, reducing visibility to zero.” The sandstorms are sweeping across China, and “are expected to hit Taiwan Tuesday.”

AUSTRALIA-PACIFIC Tomas, a Category Four cyclone, is plowing through Fiji, forcing thousands to evacuate. A “beast of a storm” ripped through Melbourne, Australia last week, “bringing with it hailstones the size of tennis balls” and causing $200 million in damage. Meanwhile flooding “which has smashed all the records known” in Queensland peaked in the country’s northeast, “parts of which have been in drought for almost a decade.” Category Four cyclone Ului now hovers off the Australian coast after the Solomon Islands narrowly escaped its wrath.

ANTARCTICA Okay, so Antarctica has enjoyed a sunny and balmy summer. Unfortunately, with the pleasant skies have come accelerated melting of the ice shelves, causing sea levels to rise, the U.S. Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey have found.

Here is the Original Article, Complete with Links

And from Aaron Lewis, commenting in Climate Progress:

In 1970, rain on Greenland was very rare. It had been reported, but almost nobody had actually seen it. Now, it rains on some part of Greenland every month. By my count it has rained somewhere in Greenland in at least the last 30 consecutive calendar months. Rain in Greenland in January? Yes, two years in a row. This is not your father’s Greenland.

Last fall, long after Greenland should have frozen for the winter, the satellite images showed new melt water drainage channels forming higher on the flanks of the ice, and melt water lakes that had drained in August, refilling.

By the climate records of 1970, the current weather in Greenland is off the charts weird.

No single extreme weather proves much, but when the world is engulfed, it's pretty obvious something is drastically wrong. How many "Disasters" can we afford to repair?
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