Post About Connection of Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events

The question is, what is the connection between climate change and extreme weather events and disasters?

• Based on what you just saw and read - how would you answer this question?
• What are the connections? Does it even matter?
• Is there a good analogy you can use to illustrate the connections?
• And - who is Kevin Trenberth?

I would answer this question by first pointing out there is no direct evidence to prove that the increase in temperature is the ONLY cause for an increase in extreme weather events (i.e. heat waves, hurricanes, forest fires, etc.). From reading and watching videos about this information it seems though that there is a bit of a consensus to say that the increase in temperature globally leads to extreme weather events to become more likely to occur. Meaning that the increase in temperature makes it such that areas that already had forest fires, that are now hotter because of global warming, are more prone to get a forest fire. The sources that I got from touched upon the idea that climate change is so hard to connect to extreme weather events, because fires are a few steps removed from simply a temperature rise and is hard to show a direct connection. There is also an idea that climate change can also cause the cold extremes, such as increased snow, but the fact still remains there is no direct link that we can be positive to make such a call. A good way to look at the scenario would to be to compare it to studying for an exam. Take for example someone who reads the book assigned for a course. You would think that a person who does all the work is going to get a good grade, there is an assumption that doing the work increases your chances of getting a good grade on an exam. Except the fact still remains there is no way to assure that doing all the work will get that good grade, just like with climate change and extreme weather events. We notice that the increase in climate change is also caused some increases in extreme weather events, but you cannot make the assumption that it is a DIRECT cause without proof, same as you cannot say that simply reading will get you good grades(other factors like applying ones' self are important). Finally the last answer of who is Kevin Trenberth is answered by saying that he is a lead scientist that is part of the Climate Analysis Section at the USA National Center for Atmospheric Research. He is a Atmospheric scientist as well as a meteorologist that was the lead author of the IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change 3 different years(1995, 2001, 2007). 

Sources used: 

http://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience/2012/07/03/welcome-to-the-new-climate-ncar-climate-expert-kevin-trenberth-on-pbs/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beKLrwCvkO0&feature=youtu.be

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5OYZdqOzxSLYnV6NjNvUHZaWVk/edit

Feebacks

The ice-albedo feedback is the system in which snow and ice reflects back more sunlight and heat than other surfaces, therefore cooling an area, but when this ice melts it in turns is reflecting less heat back. So when the ice melts in an area such as the Arctic it will inevitably cause more ice to melt, because more heat will get trapped in the area than before and cause a trend of ice melting. Not only can heat from the sun cause this effect, but also human heating and other processes of creating heat can cause ice to melt and lead to more ice melting.

Source: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate-change/guide/science/explained/feedbacks

Figure 1: This separates the latitudes into three regions. At the higher latitudes you see a constant polar season, where the temperature is cooler, opposed to the central tropic region where it is consistently wet and dry and warm.

http://www.mrgunnells.com/uploads/1/0/6/6/10664026/1190285_orig.jpg

Ice Cores

Ice cores are a useful tool in predicting the past climate change. One such reason for this is that when the layers of snow fall down they trap the dust, sea-salts, ash, gas bubbles and human pollutants of the past underneath and it freezes over. The important part is that it traps all of this so we can later examine the inside chemical makeup to figure out these concentrations at separate periods. The deeper you dig to retrieve an ice core the longer period of time you can see variation of weather periods and what the area was like in the past. An important piece of information gathered from these ice cores though is the water isotopes that are known to have relationships with temperature and are good predictors at determining past temperatures beyond our records. The ability of these ice cores to trap substances and chemicals is key in helping figure out climate change, and the fact that they are layered so well helps determine time periods and how these periods changed in climate. For example salt concentrations are associated with higher winds, similar to how the water isotopes are associated with temperatures.

Source: http://climatechange.umaine.edu/icecores/IceCore/Ice_Core_101.html

Ocean Sediments

1. Ocean sediments are special, because they can be used to find out climate change of water surfaces of oceans and of areas on continents next to these oceans.
2. Ocean sediments are good for predicting the climate of past surface water temperatures, salinity, dissolved oxygen and nutrient availability. Also using inorganic materials found in ocean sediments can be used to find information about continental humidity-aridity variations and intensities/directions of winds.
3. Things that set Ocean sediments apart from other proxies is that there are billions of tonnes found on ocean basins every year, so there is almost always availability to this source.
4. The areas that Ocean sediments truly excel is in coastal continental areas and finding out surface temperatures in the surrounding waters, these sediments are good for determining climate change of these locations. They are also able to help find these changes from ranges of thousands of years all the way to ten million years in the past.
5. Ocean Sediments would prefer to work in areas that are coastal, such as off the coast of California, Alaska, Australia, and basically anywhere that has a surrounding area of water that has sediments for study.

Source: http://www.global-climate-change.org.uk/3-3-4.php