Extreme weather patterns may worsen in 2012 says NASA scientist

February 26, 2011 – AUSTRALIA – As unsual as weather patterns have been and will be in 2011; it’s hard to imagine things getting more extreme but that’s exactly what top climate scientists are now warning the public about.  ‘Kevin Trenberth, the head of climate analysis for of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, explained: “There is a systematic influence on all of these weather events nowadays because there is more water vapour lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be, say, 30 years ago. It’s about a four per cent extra amount, provides plenty of moisture for these storms and it’s unfortunate that the public is not associating this with the fact that this is one manifestation of climate change. And the prospects are that these kinds of things will only get worse in the future.” Globally, 2010 saw 19 nations – a record number – set temperature records including Pakistan, which hit 53.5C, the hottest temperature ever reliably measured in Asia’s history. From mid-December to mid-January of this year, the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) reported that parts of north-eastern Canada were 21C above average, “which are very large values to be sustained for an entire month.” In Coral Harbour, in the north-west corner of Hudson Bay, “the town went 11 days without getting down to its average daily high.” In mid-December, Greenland experienced the most extreme high-pressure system of its kind ever recorded anywhere on the planet. Last year saw the greatest ice melt on record for Greenland. In America, Tennessee was devastated by a once-in-1,000-year rain storm leading to what some called Nashville’s Katrina. In October, the strongest storm ever recorded in the Midwest broke pressure records. Craig Fugate, who heads the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, said in December: “The term ‘100-year event’ really lost its meaning this year.”
The Moscow heatwave this summer was so severe that the Russian Meteorological Centre reported: “There was nothing similar to this on the territory of Russia during the last 1,000 years in regard to the heat.” The Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, said: “What is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past.” Pakistan was inundated by a deluge that seemed beyond imagination – until an area the size of Germany and France combined was inundated by “biblical” floods in Australia. In Carnarvon, more than a year’s rain fell in just 24 hours. In one city in Queensland, six inches fell in just 30 minutes. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology in its annual report for 2010 pointed out: “Very warm sea surface temperatures contributed to the record rainfall and very high humidity across eastern Australia during winter and spring. The most recent decade (2001-10) was also the warmest decade on record for sea surface temperatures following the pattern observed over land.” America’s top climatologist, Dr James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, said: “Given the association of extreme weather and climate events with rising global temperature, the expectation of new record high temperatures in 2012 also suggests that the frequency and magnitude of extreme events could reach a high level in 2012.” –The Citizen