Post by Vierotchka on May 24, 2013 13:18:54 GMT -5
Is Australia the Face of Climate Change to Come?
Extreme weather Down Under may foreshadow events on a global scale.
Matt Siegel
for National Geographic News
Published May 24, 2013
In early 2012 once-in-a-century floods submerged swaths of Great Britain and Ireland, causing some $1.52 billion in damages. Then in June record-high temperatures in Russia sparked wildfires that consumed 74 million acres of pristine Siberian taiga. Months after that, Hurricane Sandy pummeled seven countries, killing hundreds and running up an estimated $75 billion in damages. Just this week, a tornado of virtually unheard of size and ferocity tore through a small city in Oklahoma, leaving 24 people dead.
Each of these one-off traumas was bad enough, wreaking havoc, but in Australia such events seem to be becoming commonplace.
The Lucky Country has experienced a major spike in extreme weather in the past few years, with a string of devastating incidents just since January.
That has people wondering if the island continent is somehow a perfect bellwether for the Earth's changing climate. So scientists are bearing down on the problem with intensity, investigating Australia's increasingly violent weather patterns and trying to figure out what they might portend for the rest of the world as our climate changes.
Read the whole article and access the in-text links at news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130524-australia-extreme-weather-climate-change-heat-wave-science-world/
Extreme weather Down Under may foreshadow events on a global scale.
Matt Siegel
for National Geographic News
Published May 24, 2013
In early 2012 once-in-a-century floods submerged swaths of Great Britain and Ireland, causing some $1.52 billion in damages. Then in June record-high temperatures in Russia sparked wildfires that consumed 74 million acres of pristine Siberian taiga. Months after that, Hurricane Sandy pummeled seven countries, killing hundreds and running up an estimated $75 billion in damages. Just this week, a tornado of virtually unheard of size and ferocity tore through a small city in Oklahoma, leaving 24 people dead.
Each of these one-off traumas was bad enough, wreaking havoc, but in Australia such events seem to be becoming commonplace.
The Lucky Country has experienced a major spike in extreme weather in the past few years, with a string of devastating incidents just since January.
That has people wondering if the island continent is somehow a perfect bellwether for the Earth's changing climate. So scientists are bearing down on the problem with intensity, investigating Australia's increasingly violent weather patterns and trying to figure out what they might portend for the rest of the world as our climate changes.
Read the whole article and access the in-text links at news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130524-australia-extreme-weather-climate-change-heat-wave-science-world/
