Wednesday, June 01, 2016

Texas is ONE more example of the affects of global warming.

It's hard to believe there are still people who deny global warming and climate change. But there are. Even Donald Trump is a climate change denier. While many people may refuse to believe it, it is effecting them. Great changes in the weather, with more intense storms is now happening. The best example is the flooding going on right now in Texas. Some folks are beginning to notice. But the majority of  US citizens need to head the warning now before these changes become so permanent that they can't be changed. The rest of us will have to learn to live with the consequences of global warming for some time to come. So here is an article from a British publication.- SJ Otto
  

A new study finds a human fingerprint in the wettest month on record in Texas and Oklahoma.


We know that as humans emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it causes the Earth to warm. But it also causes other climate changes that are less obvious. In some instances, it makes areas wetter (because there is more moisture in the air as temperature increases). This can lead to increased flooding. In other instances, it speeds evaporation so that droughts can set in more quickly and deeply. While it would appear these affects would offset each other, in reality more droughts or floods occur depending on where you are located. 
In some instances, areas are experiencing more severe droughts and more flooding as the weather systems swing from dry to wet quickly. Added to this is the fact that ocean temperatures have an enormous influence on weather. 
As an example, an El Niño, which is the appearance of a warm water pool in the Pacific Ocean, can influence weather across the globe. Human-caused warming of the oceans adds to the El Niño cycles, which in turn affect the atmosphere. The real scientific question is, do human greenhouse gases influence a specific flood or drought event? A growing body of science is finding that the answer to this question is yes.
A paper just published in Geophysical Research Letters looked at the May 2015 floods in Texas and Oklahoma in the USA, which resulted from the wettest single month on record in both states. The lead author, Dr. Wang from Utah State and his colleagues examined the role of strengthened El Niño teleconnections on the flood event. Before getting into their conclusions, a little background is important. 
For the rest click here.

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