Climate Change Signs Building - "'The Coming Global Superstorm' book is beginning to look like it was written by a couple of prophets. But it wasn't magic, just good research. Unfortunately, the one thing that the authors did wrong was that they UNDERESTIMATED the speed of change. Now Dr. Robert Watson of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is saying that the earth's temperature is rising twice as fast as thought ten years ago. In another story, scientists are saying that methane is building up in the atmosphere for the same reason it did 14,000 years ago, in an event that the authors, Whitley and, believe resulted in the last superstorm. At the same time, Nature Magazine has published a paper saying that ocean currents are slowing down, and other scientists have announced that climate change is likely to be sudden.
What does all of this mean to us? We can expect some very dramatic warming over the next few years. There will be periods in tropical areas where temperatures go above levels at which human life can be sustained for very long. It is likely that tropical India or the Arabian desert will see temperatures above 130F. before too much longer. At the same time, very violent storms will continue to strike Europe and North America, growing slowly more violent with time. Events such as Tropical Storm Allison, which unexpectedly dumped record rainfalls and caused 43 deaths in the US, will become more commonplace.
What should we watch for? Two danger signals: a sudden spike in temperatures in the arctic and the failure of the Gulf Stream. We watch a buoy in the North Atlantic that is inside the Gulf Stream. Should the water temeperature at that buoy drop overnight, we would consider an alert. If this happened at a time when Arctic temperatures were reaching records, it would probably mean that a serious climate event was under way.
How likely is it to happen tomorrow? We are in uncharted climatic waters, and there is urgent need for more research. Unfortunately, the administration is making dramatic cutbacks in climate research funding, so this research will not happen. Right now, North Atlantic water temperatures are consistently higher than normal, and the Gulf Stream is exhibiting minor irregularities. So we watch and wait...and hope, always, for the best.
Keep up with the Quickwatch every week. It's updated each Friday, but we watch the indicators daily. Go to Unknowncountry.com and click on Quickwatch in the left-hand column."