Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Scorching
Global Temps Astound Climate Scientists
As wildfire rages in California, flooding affects millions in
India and China, and eggs are fried on sidewalks in Iraq, scientists say global
climate catastrophe is surpassing predictions
Record global heat in
the first half of 2016 has caught climate scientists off-guard, reports Thompson Reuters Foundation.
"What
concerns me most is that we didn't anticipate these temperature jumps,"
David Carlson, director of the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO)
climate research program, told Thompson Reuters Foundation late Monday. "We predicted
moderate warmth for 2016, but nothing like the temperature rises we've seen."
"Massive
temperature hikes, but also extreme events like floodings, have become the new
normal," Carlson added. "The ice melt rates recorded in the first
half of 2016, for example—we don't usually see those until later in the
year."
Indeed,
extreme weather events are currently wreaking havoc around the world.
In
Southern California, firefighters are battling one of the "most extreme" fires the region has ever seen. The
so-called sand fire had
consumed 38,346 acres as of Wednesday morning and forced the evacuations of
10,000 homes, and one person has died.
Meteorologist
Eric Holthaus reported on
the unusual fire last Friday in Pacific Standard:
The fire,
which started as a small brush fire along the side of Highway 14 near Santa
Clarita, California, on Friday, quickly spread out of control under weather
conditions that were nearly ideal for explosive growth. The fire doubled in size
overnight on Friday, and then doubled again during the day on Saturday.
"The
fire behavior was some of the most extreme I've seen in the Los Angeles area in
my career," says Stuart Palley, a wildfire photographer based in Southern
California. "The fire was running all over the place. … It was
incredible to see." There were multiple reports of
flames 50 to 100 feet high on Saturday, which is unusual for fires in the
region.
Time-lapse
footage filmed on July 23 showed the fire's tall flames and rapid growth:
"Since late 2011," Holthaus explained, "Los
Angeles County has missed out on about three years' worth of rain.
Simply put: Extreme weather and climate conditions have helped produce this
fire's extreme behavior."
The fire is an omen of things to come, according to Holthaus:
"Even if rainfall amounts don't change in the future, drought and wildfire severity likely will because warmer temperatures are more
efficient at evaporating what little moisture does fall. That, according to
scientists, means California's risk of a mega-drought — spanning decades
or more — is, or will be soon, the highest it's been in millennia."
As
University of California professor Anthony LeRoy Westerling wrote Tuesday
in the Guardian:
"A changing climate is transforming our landscape, and fire is one of the
tools it uses. Expect to see more of it, in more places, as temperatures
rise."
Meanwhile,
in India's northeast, Reuters reported Tuesday
that over 1.2 million people "have been hit by floods which have submerged
hundreds of villages, inundated large swathes of farmland and damaged roads,
bridges and telecommunications services, local authorities said on
Tuesday."
Reuters added
that nearly 90,000 people are currently being housed in 220 relief camps.
"Incessant
monsoon rains in the tea and oil-rich state of Assam have forced the burgeoning
Brahmaputra river and its tributaries to burst their banks—affecting more than
half of the region's 32 districts," the wire service reported.
Local officials also told the media that "more than 60 percent
of region's famed Kaziranga National Park, home to two-thirds of the world's
endangered one-horned rhinoceroses, is also under water, leaving the animals
more vulnerable to poaching."
An unusually heavy monsoon season has also
devastated communities in northern China, AFP reported Monday, with nearly 300 dead or missing and hundreds of
thousands displaced after catastrophic flooding hit the region.
And in Iraq, temperatures last week reached such unprecedented heights that a chef literally fried an egg
on the sidewalk. The TODAY show tweeted footage of the incident:
It’s hot enough to fry eggs on the street in Iraq where
temperatures topped 120 degreeshttps://t.co/SLUnY4Pq1m
— TODAY
(@TODAYshow) July 21, 2016
Stateside,
the heat dome continues
to inflict scorching summer temperatures across the country. In one Arizona
locale, for example, meteorologists are predicting a
scorching high temperature on Wednesday of 114° Fahrenheit. One Arizona
resident posted a video Tuesday desperately asking people to
pray for the state as it faces more hot weather. "It is still six billion
degrees," the resident lamented. "Lord, we need you."
Yet there
appears to be little relief in sight: for the first time ever, USA Today reported Tuesday,
the U.S. federal government's climate prediction center is forecasting
hotter-than-normal temperatures for the next three months for "every
square inch" of the country.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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