Climate Extremes

This entry will be somewhat different from most - it'll be a list of extreme events which have happened over the last few weeks. The litany has always been that "No one event proves Climate Change is happening." So none of these, by themselves, proves anything. And so none of them are reported as definitely Climate Change events.

But when you put them all together...

You end up looking at a HUGE number of tornados - Michigan, Minnesota, Manitoba and Ontario have all reported "unprecedented" numbers, but of course, nobody relates on to the other, especially since some are inCanada, some in the US.


Flooding across the western Canadian plains is also unprecedented - the main Trans Canada Highway was shut down for over a week - nobody can understand how that can happen, especially since the area affected is generally considered semi-arid.

From Climate Progress:
 
China, “The Southern Daily said over 600 millimetres (24 inches) of rain fell in Guangdong’s Huilai county over a six-hour period on Friday, a 500-year record.” That’s two feet of rain in 6 hours!


As Dr. Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told me earlier this month: "There is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms and it’s unfortunate that the public is not associating these with the fact that this is one manifestation of climate change. And the prospects are that these kinds of things will only get bigger and worse in the future."

The latest record-smashing U.S. superstorm was two weeks ago in Oklahoma. Now we know it was even more record-setting than initially thought; Oklahoma City was paralyzed by flash floods. The final daily rainfall for Oklahoma City is 7.62″. This breaks the all-time daily rainfall record for any day in any month.

The Weather Channel reported that a rainfall observation of 10.21″ in OKC has exceeded the 1-in-500 year rainfall total for a 12 hour period. Moreover, the 9 inches that fell in 6 hours meets the requirements for a 1 in 500 year flood event.

That’s almost as impressive as Tennessee’s 1000-year deluge. As with Tennessee, New England, and Georgia, what makes OK’s deluge doubly remarkable is that it was not the remnant of a tropical storm.

As for heat, meteorologist Jeff Masters reports:

A withering heat wave of unprecedented intensity and areal covered continues to smash all-time high temperatures Asia and Africa. As I reported earlier this week, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Chad, Niger, Pakistan, and Myanmar have all set new records for their hottest temperatures of all time over the past six weeks. The remarkable heat continued over Africa and Asia late this week. The Asian portion of Russia recorded its highest temperate in history yesterday, when the mercury hit 42.3°C (108.1°F) at Belogorsk, near the Amur River border with China. The previous record was 41.7°C (107.1°F) at nearby Aksha on July 21, 2004. (The record for European Russia is 43.8°C–110.8°F–set on August 6, 1940, at Alexandrov Gaj near the border with Kazakhstan.) Also, on Thursday, Sudan recorded its hottest temperature in its history when the mercury rose to 49.6°C (121.3°F) at Dongola. The previous record was 49.5°C (121.1°F) set in July 1987 in Aba Hamed.

We’ve now had eight countries in Asia and Africa, plus the Asian portion of Russia, that have beaten their all-time hottest temperature record during the past two months. This includes Asia’s hottest temperature of all-time, the astonishing 53.5°C (128.3°F) mark set on May 26 in Pakistan. All of these records are unofficial, and will need to be certified by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). According to Chris Burt, author of Extreme Weather, the only year which can compare is 2003, when six countries (the UK, France, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein) all broke their all-time heat records during that year’s notorious summer heat wave. Fortunately, the residents of the countries affected by this summer’s heat wave in Asia and Africa are more adapted to extreme high temperatures, and we are not seeing the kind of death tolls experienced during the 2003 European heat wave (30,000 killed.) This week’s heat wave in Africa and the Middle East is partially a consequence of the fact that Earth has now seen three straight months with its warmest temperatures on record, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. It will be interesting to see if the demise of El Niño in May will keep June from becoming the globe’s fourth straight warmest month on record.

But individual events prove nothing, right?