The bad ones get bigger

Before the 'late' bin Laden took over the headlines, there was a week of real bad tornadoes that lashed parts of the US in what was the worst season since early 70s. Does this say anything at all? Is this to do with climate change or is it simply part of a natural swing in the climate?

For decades, scientists have predicted that if we kept pouring increasing amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we would change the climate. As far back as 1995, analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center showed that over the course of the 20th century, the United States had suffered a statistically significant increase in a variety of extreme weather events, the very ones you would expect from global warming, such as more — and more intense — precipitation. That analysis concluded the chances were only “5 to 10 percent” this increase was due to factors other than global warming, such as “natural climate variability.”

Since then, many scientific studies have found that indeed the weather has become more extreme, as expected, and that it is extremely likely that humans are a contributing cause. They suggest 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.

The basic driver of thunderstorms is the instability in the atmosphere: warm moist air at low levels with drier air aloft. With global warming the low level air is warm and moister and there is more energy available to fuel all of these storms and increase the buoyancy of the air so that thunderstorms are strong.

Whether you believe climate change is the villain or not, there is no slaying of this big baddie possible in the near future, not the way we continue to live. Uncontrolled population and near-beserk consumption have written the recipe and cooked the dish already.