Why Are We Seeing More Extreme Weather?

By Meteorologist, Mike Hernandez

Have you noticed it? Or is it just me? Has the weather been extra crazy in the last few years? Well the short answer is,”Yes!”
And we aren’t the only ones who are thinking that.

In the last twenty years or so we’ve seen more droughts, floods, severe weather outbreaks, crazy arctic blasts, like here in Texas last year, more major hurricanes and more wild fires just to name a few of the weather events that scientists are calling extreme. Glaciers have shrunk, ice on rivers and lakes are breaking up earlier and sea levels are steadily rising.

Here are some alarming numbers:
-In the Western U.S. in 2020, 10.2 million acres were destroyed by wildfires, causing 20 billion dollars in fire damage.
-In 2021 the Atlantic Hurricane season was the third most active on record producing 21 named storms. It was the sixth consecutive year in which there was above average tropical activity.
-We also saw an increase in major hurricanes, category 3 or higher, in the Atlantic and Caribbean. In 2017 Harvey, Irma and Maria caused millions of dollars in damage.
-All of the seven hottest years on Earth have happened in the last seven years.
-The ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic are losing land based ice at a rate of 276 billion metric tons per year since 2002 according to NASA’s Grace and Grace Follow-on Satellite data.

So What’s Going On?
First, a little disclaimer. I’m not political and have no monetary or special interest in what I’m going to discuss.
I have been working in Meteorology for more than 45 years now, in the Air Force, Civil Service, as a Wildland Firefighter and 32 years as a Broadcast Meteorologist on TV. I’m just looking at the latest information and drawing what is for me, some pretty obvious conclusions. So here it goes…
It appears that one of the major factors in this change in our weather patterns and events is tied, at least to some degree to climate change.

Why Are We Seeing More Extreme Weather?
Remember when “Global Warming” was what it was called? But in a very short time that became a political football and eventually the name was changed to a more ambiguous “Climate Change.”

What is Climate Change?
For our discussion we’re going to define it as the variation in global or regional climates over time. Or in simple terms, how much the weather has changed where you live since the Industrial Revolution.
I say, “since the Industrial Revolution,” because that’s when our country and world became mechanized powered by oil and gas.

What does using oil and gas for our industry, cars and homes, basically what we call fossil fuels, have to do with climate change?
Let me start with something most of you have heard of, The Greenhouse Effect. Well, life on this beautiful little planet depends on energy or heat coming from the sun. About 50% of the heat from the sun reaches the earth’s surface where it’s absorbed and then radiated back into the atmosphere as infrared heat. Approximately 90% of the the heat is then absorbed by the greenhouse gases and re-radiated back to the earth. That’s how the earth is warmed. Otherwise we’d be a very cold and icy planet.
But what has happened since the mid 20th century is that humans have accelerated the amount of certain greenhouse gases, mostly from our use of fossil fuels, and now because of that our earth is warming quicker than it ever has.

The main greenhouse gas that’s causing this is Carbon Dioxide. According to one study by NASA, humans have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration by 48% since the industrial revolution and this is more than what happened naturally over a 20,000 year period!!

The carbon dioxide blocks the heat from escaping. The more we use fossil fuels, the more carbon dioxide we produce and the more it blocks the heat from escaping and the warmer Earth is steadily becoming. That’s it in a nutshell!!

That is my opinion of the root cause of the changes we’re seeing. Now granted, some of these extreme weather changes and events can be tied directly to climate change while others are more inconclusive.

For instance the increase in the total number of hurricanes in the North Atlantic is harder to tie in while the intensity of major hurricanes is easier to do because of the fact that warm ocean waters fuel the hurricanes and the temperatures have definitely warmed in the last twenty years as has the atmosphere above it.
If you’re wanting something more concrete as far as proof that climate change is having a direct affect on a lot of the extreme weather events we’re seeing worldwide, try reading the National Climate Assessment reports. They do their best to give an accurate cause and effect relationship of extreme events. www.science2017.globalchange.gov

The Bottom Line
I want to close by giving you some forecasts by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) which include about 1300 scientists from the United States and other countries on what we are likely to see through this century and beyond.
-Global climate is projected to continue to change over the remainder of this century and beyond.
– Even though the earth does not heat evenly as we know, because of human induced warming, global temperatures will continue to rise.
-The length of the growing seasons of crops will continue to increase with the largest increases in the Western States.
-Average U.S. rainfall has increased since 1900 and projections are that the trend towards heavier precipitation events will continue. The trend is projected to occur even in regions where total precipitation is expected to decrease like in the Southwest U.S.
-More droughts and droughts and heat waves are projected to become more intense especially in the Southwest.
-Hurricanes will become stronger and more intense in the North Atlantic.
-Sea Level will rise 1-8 feet by 2100.This is the result of added water from melting land ice and the expansion of seawater as it warms.
– And perhaps most startling! The Arctic Ocean is expected to become basically ice free in summer by mid-century.
I won’t lie, these forecasts of what we may see in the coming years are a little scary!

Can We Change This Forecast?
Well, we’ll still see a lot of these extreme weather events happen even if we change what we’re doing to the atmosphere, because the damage that has already been done is irreversible.

But we can, I think, slow the process down and then slowly over time hopefully change the outcome.

That’s something for all of us to think about.

As always take care and God Bless!