Extreme winter weather linked to climate change (Reuters)

Tuesday, March 1, 2011 9:01 PM By dwi

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – This winter's onerous snowfalls and another extremity storms could substantially be attendant to accumulated wetness in the expose due to global status change, a commission of scientists said on Tuesday.

This player wetness is likely to bring on exceptional broad with the onset of outflow in the Northern Hemisphere, as unfathomable snowpack melts and expected onerous rains add to seasonal run-off, the scientists said in a telephone briefing.

As the planet warms up, more liquid from the oceans is evaporated into the atmosphere, said character Sanford, a status scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. At the same time, because the location is warmer, it crapper stop onto more of the wetness that it takes in.

Intense storms are ofttimes the termination when the location reaches its intensity point, Sanford said.

This year, a program of onerous storms over the U.S. Midwest to the Northeast hit dropped up to 400 proportionality of average snows in whatever locations, said Jeff Masters, administrator of meteorology at Weather Underground.

The invoke of liquid in that snowpack is among the highest on record, poet said.

"If you were to take every that liquid and mix it, it would become out to more than 6 inches over super swaths of the area," poet said. "If every that liquid gets unleashed in a hurry, in a explosive warming, and whatever onerous rains in the area, we could be hunting at achievement broad along the Upper river River and the Red River in North Dakota."

That tallies with projections by the U.S. National Weather Service, which terminal period said a super debase of the northerly central United States is at risk of moderate to field broad this spring.

SPRING CREEP

Spring floods could be exacerbated by outflow creep, a phenomenon where outflow begins early than previously.

"We've registered in the mountains of the U.S. West that the outflow runoff beat today comes between digit and three weeks early than it utilised to 60 eld ago," poet said. "And that's because of device temperatures tending to mix that snowpack early and earlier."

In the terminal century, global average temperatures hit risen by 1.4 degrees physicist (.8 Celsius). Last assemblage equal for the warmest in the modern record. One locate this warmth showed up was in the Arctic, which is a field weather-maker for the Northern Hemisphere, according to Mark Serreze, administrator of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center.

One utility of this winter's "crazy weather," Serreze said, is an atmospheric pattern known as the Arctic Oscillation, which has moved into what status scientists call a negative phase.

This form effectuation there is broad pressure over the Arctic and low pressure at mid-latitudes, which makes the Arctic regularize relatively warm, but spills cold Arctic expose south to places same the U.S. Midwest and Northeast.

This negative Arctic Oscillation has been plain for digit eld in a row, the same digit winters that hit had extremity storms and onerous snowfalls.

It is possible, but not certain, that the negative Arctic Oscillation is linked to hot of the Arctic, which is in invoke influenced by a decrease in seafaring cover cover throughout the region.

The exclusive underlying account for these events is status hot due to heightened edifice gas levels, Serreze said.

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)


Source

0 comments:

Post a Comment