Record Cold + Heat = Climate Confusion
With the extra-cold weather across much of the U.S. this weekend there is understandably some confusion given the concern about planetary warming. Even President Trump’s tweet above wished for some of the “good old Global Warming” which he has said he does not believe is really happening. Indeed these are very confusing times.
Though the Boston Globe on Monday focused on the Patriots heading towards the Super Bowl (again!), the story below the fold is: “Bundle Up, It’s Bitter Cold.” Yet elsewhere in the world, Australia literally is breaking all heat records, which I will come back to in a moment. Antarctica is experiencing record warmth during their summer, with glaciers melting at accelerating rates.
Wait just a minute. Extreme cold and heat at the same time. This seems strangely familiar. Looking back it was just a year ago that we had a very similar story. “Why Freezing Temps are Due to Warming” was my blog headline on December 30, 2017 –– shown below with a warmer world in red and a single blob of cold air mass on North America. Reading it is like a replay: Icy, super cold storms hit New England and President Trump pined for some global warming. As Yogi Berra said, It’s like déjá vu all over again.
https://johnenglander.net/wp/sea-level-rise-blog/freezing-temps-due-warming/
From www.theguardian.com
At the same that much of the U.S. is experiencing extreme cold, Australia is experiencing record heat. They are having to create new colors to use on the maps as shown at right. The purple shown is depicting 45 degrees Celsius, which is 113 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the text from The Guardian:
“Extreme temperatures are persisting – and even peaking – in Victoria and New South Wales on the fifth day of Australia’s extraordinary, record-breaking heatwave with Noona in western NSW recording a minimum temperature of 35.9C, a new Australian heat record. On Friday, parts of NSW and the ACT were again forecast to soar above 40C – for the fifth day in a row. Nine records were broken in NSW on Wednesday, and more are forecast to fall on Friday. In Penrith in Sydney’s west, temperatures will hit 45C, up from 42C on Thursday. In Menindee – the site of mass fish kills in the Murray river – another 45C day is on the cards. It reached 47C on Wednesday and Thursday, and the maximum temperature hasn’t been below 45C since Monday.”
Weird, extraordinary weather, in strange patterns. Is a new pattern emerging?
Sort of. The world is measurably warmer compared to a century ago, already a degree Celsius, which is 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit and is on track to double that by mid-century, which shows up as the extreme heat in most places. That heat can disrupt weather patterns even in some surprising ways.
93% of the excess heat being trapped in our atmosphere is stored in the sea. That extra heat affects ocean currents such as the Gulf stream in the Atlantic or the El Nino pattern in the Pacific. To make matters worse, the warming is double or triple the global average in the high northern latitudes–near the North Pole. That melts the Arctic sea ice. As the Arctic sea ice disappears, global weather patterns change such as disruption to the Jet Stream. Terms like Polar Vortex are devised to describe how masses of cold polar air dip farther south than the historical norm. This is all part of climate change, perhaps climate destabilization.
Welcome to the era of Climate Confusion. While abnormal extreme heat and cold in places around the world may seem confusing, there is one measure that can cut through the confusion…sea level rise.
The trend of rising sea level is clear, which is why I focus on it. Through all the clutter and chatter about the extremes of weather, the rising sea and shifting shoreline have a way of galvanizing our attention. More and more people recognize that the glaciers are melting and disappearing and the added water raises sea level. More and more people notice that frequent flooding in all coastal communities is getting worse by the decade. At some point, sooner or later, I hope that everyone can see the pattern. That should spur us all to slow the warming and to begin adaptation.