Connecting storms to global warming a 'distraction', say experts

Hooking up extreme weather to global warming throws from the necessity to safeguard society from high-impact weather occasions which continuously happen regardless of human-caused global warming, say experts.

Writing within the journal Weather, Climate and Society, the College of Manchester scientists reason that cutting green house gas pollutants, while essential to reducing humanity's longer-term impact in the world, won't eliminate violent storms, tornadoes or flooding and also the damage they cause.

The authors claim that developing greater resilience to extreme weather occasions should be given greater priority when the socioeconomic impact of storms, like individuals which have ravaged Britain this winter, will be reduced.

Professor David Schultz, among the authors from the guest editorial, stated: "Among the lengthy-term results of global warming is frequently predicted to become a rise in the intensity and frequency of numerous high-impact weather occasions, so reducing green house gas pollutants is frequently seen is the reaction to the issue.

"Reducing humanity's effect on our world ought to be went after ought to be emergency, but more emphasis should also go on being resilient to individual weather occasions, because this year's storms in great britan have so devastatingly proven."

Previously, the authors, society taken care of immediately weather problems with requires greater resilience, but awareness of humanmade global warming has provided climate timescales (decades and centuries) much better importance than weather timescales (days and years)

Schultz, a professor of synoptic meteorology, and co-author Dr Vladimir Jankovic, a science historian specialising in climate and weather, the short-term, large variability from year upon year in high-impact weather causes it to be difficult, otherwise impossible, to attract conclusions concerning the correlation to longer-term global warming.

They reason that while large public opportunities in dams and ton defences, for instance, must take into account the options of methods weather might change later on, this will not prevent short-term thinking to deal with more immediate vulnerability to inevitable high-impact weather occasions.

"Staying away from construction in floodplains, applying strong building codes, and growing readiness could make society more resilient to extreme weather occasions," stated Dr Jankovic. "But adding to however , finding money for recovery is simpler than investing on prevention, even when the expense of recovery tend to be greater."

This prejudice, the authors, includes a inclination to decrease the political dedication for preventative measures against extreme weather, no matter whether or not they are triggered or intensified by humanmade influences. Yet, steps come to safeguard society in the weather can safeguard the earth too, they argue.

Dr Jankovic stated: "Enhancing predicting, growing readiness or building better infrastructure can increase resilience and lower carbon-dioxide pollutants. For instance, greening communities or painting roofs lighter colours will both lessen the urban warmth-island effect and lower carbon-dioxide pollutants through reduced air-conditioning costs, while making metropolitan areas more resistant against storm damage would cut back pollutants produced from repairing devastated areas."

Professor Schultz added: "Connecting high-impact weather occasions with global warming could be annoying perpetuating the concept that reducing green house gases could be enough to lessen progressively vulnerable world populations, in our opinion, only atmosphere the general public and policy-makers regarding the socio-economic inclination towards extreme weather.

"Without or with minimization, there's no quick-fix, single-cause solution for that problem of human vulnerability to socio-environment change, nor what is the reasonable prospect of attenuating high-impact weather. Addressing such issues will give the planet an chance to build up a 2-pronged policy in climate security, reducing longer-term climate risks along with stopping shorter-term weather problems."

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Warm weather deaths forecasted to increase 257 percent in United kingdom by 2050s, experts warn

The amount of annual excess deaths triggered by warm weather in Britain is forecasted to surge by 257% by the center of a lifetime, consequently of global warming and population growth, concludes research released online within the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

The seniors (75 ) is going to be most in danger, especially in the South and also the Midlands, the findings suggest.

The study team, in the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Public Health England, used time-series regression analysis to chart historic (1993-2006) fluctuations in weather designs and dying rates to characterise the associations between temperature and mortality, by region by age bracket.

Then they applied those to forecasted population increases and native climate to estimate the long run quantity of deaths apt to be triggered by temperature -- cold and hot -- for that 2020s, 2050s, and 2080s.

They based their information around the forecasted daily average temps for 2000-09, 2020-29, 2050-59 and 2080-89, produced from the British Atmospheric Data Center (BADC), and population growth estimations in the Office of National Statistics.

The information indicated a considerably elevated chance of deaths connected with temperature across all parts of the United kingdom, using the seniors most in danger.

The amount of warm weather days is forecasted to increase considerably, tripling in frequency through the mid 2080s, while the amount of cold days is anticipated to fall, but in a less dramatic pace.

In the national level, the dying rate increases just by over 2% for each 1?C increase in temperature over the warmth threshold, having a corresponding 2% rise in the dying rate for each 1?C fall in temperature underneath the cold threshold.

Even without the any adaptive measures, excess deaths associated with warmth could be likely to rise by 257% through the 2050s, from a yearly baseline of 2000, while individuals associated with the cold could be likely to fall by 2% consequently of milder winters, from the current toll close to 41,000, and can still remain significant.

Individuals aged 85 and also over is going to be most in danger, partially consequently of population growth -- forecasted to achieve 89 million through the mid 2080s -- and also the growing proportion of seniors within the population, the authors.

Regional versions will probably persist: London and also the Midlands would be the regions most susceptible to the outcome of warmth, while Wales, its northern border West, Eastern England and also the South are most susceptible to the outcome of cold.

Rising fuel costs could make it harder to adjust to extremes of temperature, while elevated reliance upon active cooling systems could simply finish up driving up energy consumption and worsening the outcome of global warming, the authors.

Better and much more sustainable options might rather include shading, thermal insulation, selection of construction materials implemented in the design stage of urban developments, suggest the authors.

As the dying toll from cold temperature temps will stay greater than that triggered by hot temps, the authors warn that health defense against warm weather will end up progressively necessary -- and vital for that early.

"Because the contribution of population growth and aging on future temperature related health burdens is going to be large, the protection from the seniors will become important,Inch warn the authors, remembering the social changes which have brought to a lot of seniors living by themselves -- a contributory step to our prime dying toll in France within the 2003 heatwave.

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Experts: Oklahoma, not Texas, had hottest summer ever

TULSA, Okla. (AP) -- Oklahoma and Texas have argued for years about which has the best college football team, whose oil fields produce better crude, even where the state border should run. But in a hot, sticky dispute that no one wants to win, Oklahoma just reclaimed its crown.

By Sue Ogrocki, AP

Liz Moody and Stephanie Russell try to keep cool as they watch a softball game in Oklahoma City in July 2011. After recalculating data from 2011, climatologists report that Oklahoma suffered through the hottest summer ever recorded in the U.S.

By Sue Ogrocki, AP

Liz Moody and Stephanie Russell try to keep cool as they watch a softball game in Oklahoma City in July 2011. After recalculating data from 2011, climatologists report that Oklahoma suffered through the hottest summer ever recorded in the U.S.

After recalculating data from last year, the nation's climatologists are declaring that Oklahoma suffered through the hottest summer ever recorded in the U.S. last year - not Texas as initially announced last fall.

"It doesn't make me feel any better," joked Texas rancher Debbie Davis, who lives northwest of San Antonio.

In the new tally by the National Climatic Data Center, Oklahoma's average temperature last summer was 86.9 degrees, while Texas finished with 86.7 degrees. The previous record for the hottest summer was 85.2 degrees set in 1934 -- in Oklahoma.

"I'm from Oklahoma, and when you talk about the summer of 1934, there are a lot of connotations that go with that," said Deke Arndt, chief of the NCDC's climate monitoring branch in Asheville, N.C. "That whole climate episode - the Dust Bowl - that is a point in our state's history that we still look back to as transformative."

Yet the summer of 2011, "was warmer than all those summers that they experienced during the Dust Bowl," Arndt said.

Surprisingly, average summer temperatures are usually higher in states in the Southeast and southern Plains than in states in the Desert Southwest. For example, there are no "cool" spots in Oklahoma during a typical summer, while cooler parts of northern Arizona bring that state's overall average summer temperature down.

Also, the Desert Southwest's generally higher elevations and drier air lend themselves to lower overnight temperatures, which pulls the daily average down, Arndt said.

The record swap became apparent after extra data trickled in from weather stations and meteorological field reports across both states. That data also pushed up Oklahoma's mark as the hottest month ever by two-tenths of a degree, to 89.3 degrees in July 2011.

Oklahoma had experienced unusually dry, hot weather in the winter and spring, then summer brought regular triple-digit temperatures that fueled wildfires, prompted burn bans and led to water rationing in some communities.

"We didn't just barely surpass the previous summer record, we smashed it," said Gary McManus, Oklahoma's associate state climatologist. "That last summer was so far above and beyond what we consider normal, I don't think there will be another, compared to what we had."

Through the years, Texans and Oklahomans have fought over just about everything, from water rights to barbecue joints. Huge crowds attend the annual meeting of the University of Texas and University of Oklahoma football teams in Dallas.

It even took the states until 1999 to settle a boundary dispute that landed before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1894 -- before Oklahoma's statehood.

But residents on both sides of that now undisputed Texas-Oklahoma border want no part in the summer fight.

For Oklahoma rancher Monte Tucker, last summer was a breaking point, and it didn't make him feel any better Friday when he learned about his state's new dubious honor.

Last summer felt like "opening an oven after cooking bread," said Tucker, who ranches in Sweetwater, in western Oklahoma. "We basically got up right about sun-up and did all we could until 11 in the morning, and we basically shut down almost `till dark and kind of started up again.

"I don't want to do it again, I'll say that much," he said.

Last summer also took a toll on plants and trees, many of which were weakened by the intense heat.

"We had to stop planting last summer because it was silly to plant in 100-degree temperatures," said Stephen Smith, who works at Southwood Garden Center and Nursery in Tulsa.

"I've been in this business 30 years," he added. "And it was probably one of the worst temperatures I can remember."

Contributing: Doyle Rice, USA TODAY

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Experts Fear Unknown Impacts of Gas Boom

HOUSTON — Everyone agrees it’s cleaner than coal, but the trend toward making natural gas America’s top energy source is fueling fears that it may not be so great for the problem of global climate change.

While power plants that burn natural gas produce about half as many carbon emissions as those that burn coal—the dirtiest but still dominant source of U.S. electricity—there is little data on the amount of methane being produced by the boom in natural-gas drilling across the country. Scientists say methane has 20 times more impact on climate change than carbon dioxide.

“The greenhouse-gas footprint of natural-gas production is something that needs some really careful scientific and federal studies rather than making generalizations about it,” said John Deutch, chairman of an Energy Department advisory committee on shale gas. He spoke at the IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates annual conference this week, where the focus has been largely on natural gas.

Despite this uncertainty, President Obama has thrown his support behind natural-gas development, precisely because the energy source is cleaner than coal-fired power. Recent discoveries of shale natural gas all over the country promise the United States decades of the domestic energy source. But environmentalists are concerned about moving too quickly to natural gas without knowing its full impact on climate change.

“I’m worried insofar as we don’t have a handle on exactly how much methane leaks,” said Mark Brownstein, deputy director of the energy program at the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the few environmental groups working with industry on natural-gas issues. “If we’re not doing anything to gather the data and we’re not doing anything to cure the leaks, then yes, I do worry. This is a problem that we should be able to get a handle on and solve.”

Shale gas presents the country with several challenges, including concerns about water contamination associated with a controversial extraction method called hydraulic fracturing, along with the fact that near record-low gas prices are reducing the incentive to drill. But the lack of information about methane emissions from gas production may be the biggest problem of all, because it means the nation could be blindly moving toward an energy source that could cause irreversible damage with respect to climate change.

EDF is working with seven oil and gas companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, on a study evaluating methane emissions during the entire production cycle for shale natural gas, including hydraulic fracturing, which injects large amounts of water, chemicals, and sand into a well at high pressures to break up rock and release gas.

“This is an issue we need to take seriously,” Royal Dutch Shell CEO Peter Voser told hundreds of oil and gas executives at the CERA conference. “Clearly more research and hard data are needed.”

The Environmental Protection Agency is working on regulations to limit methane emissions from gas wells, but the lack of data could slow down that process as well.

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Vt. experts: Some post-Irene river repairs harmful (AP)

MONTPELIER, Vt. – In the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene's flooding, Vermont became what one lawmaker called a "lawless state" in restoring its rivers, with crews digging gravel from stream beds and piling boulders on river banks to strengthen them.

Environmentalists and some state officials told Vermont lawmakers Tuesday that the result is serious environmental damage, especially to fish habitats, as well as a possible worsening of future floods.

Vermont has the expertise to care for its rivers in ways that minimize the threat and impact of future floods, said David Mears, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation. But state regulations were relaxed on an emergency basis following the Aug. 28 storm. In some instances, the result sometimes was shoddy river restoration work, Mears and others said.

Lawmakers heard testimony that efforts to put rivers back in the courses they ran before Irene may have done more harm than good in some cases.

"Spending money to do work without consideration for how river dynamics work is just money down the hole," Mears said. "We're just going to replace the same culverts, the same bridges, the same homes, the same roads over and over and over again if we don't do it right."

Ron Rhodes, a river steward with the Connecticut River Watershed Council, told lawmakers Vermont must avoid "more unchecked, unregulated emergency dredging, graveling and channelizing in an attempt to `fix' the rivers. This is a failed practice of our past."

The day began with a talk from Mary Watzin, dean of the University of Vermont's environmental school, who gave the assembled members of three legislative committees a primer in fluvial geomorphology — the science of how rivers change their courses over land. The upshot, Watzin, state officials and environmentalists said, was that rivers need room to run with the least interference possible.

Rivers are speeded up and floods made worse by a range of human activities, they said. Straightening and channeling rivers means they can't meander around bends and dissipate energy. Replacing the soil and vegetation along river banks with boulders or other materials also denies the river a chance to lose some of its power and slow down. Impervious surfaces like streets, roofs and parking lots send storm water into rivers much faster than an absorptive marsh or forest floor.

Some of those involved in Irene recovery efforts used steam shovels and other construction equipment to dig in rivers for gravel to rebuild washed out roads. Patrick Berry, commissioner of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, said this practice could hurt populations of brook and brown trout for years to come.

Mears said his department was investigating reports that some people were illegally extracting gravel for sale.

Rep. David Deen, chairman of the House Fish, Wildlife and Water Resources Committee, said later that some of this work was done during prime fish spawning season and that the results won't be known until fish eggs hatch in the spring.

Sen. Richard McCormack, a member of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, said many of his constituents have resented a state law, passed in 1988, that bars removing gravel from rivers.

"You have a culture that to this day has never accepted that they can't," McCormack said. Following Irene, Vermont became a "lawless state" when it came to protecting its rivers, he said, with the prevailing ethic being, "Do what you have to do."

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