Earth Day: Discussing the Coming Climate Crisis With Heidi Cullen Apr 22, 2012 4:45 AM EDT
Record-breaking heat. Floods. Droughts. Tornadoes. Don’t believe the skeptics—the evidence of climate change is all around us. An interview with climatologist Heidi Cullen. When I reached Heidi Cullen, chief climatologist for Climate Central, she remarked on the glorious weather we were enjoying. But underneath our pleasure at the sunshine and blossoms, we were both feeling uneasy about the warmth. So far all 11 years of the 21st century have been among the 13 warmest years on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Cullen is in the habit of keeping a close eye on the weather: Climate Central is a nonprofit science research organization headquartered in Princeton, N.J. Before she joined them, Cullen, who holds a doctorate from Columbia University, was the Weather Channel’s first on-air climate expert. We had just been through a March of record-shattering heat, and we were roasting through mid-April days. On top of that, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, most of the U.S. is experiencing an unusually dry period, with southern Florida bone dry. More than 63 percent of Georgia is in the worst two levels of drought, the highest of any state. Because of the dry, windy conditions, wildfires and brush fires have been raging along the East Coast from New England to Florida; billowing black clouds from New Jersey Meadowlands fires have been visible from midtown Manhattan. And in much of New England, stream flow levels were at record lows—with Vermont, though still reeling from last summer’s disastrous floods, abnormally dry. “We may have just broken another record,” Cullen says of the recent heat wave. “That’s what we do these days. We break records.” Cullen noted that her phone didn’t stop ringing during the March heat wave. Whenever there is an unusual weather event, journalists want to know if it is caused by climate change. “In fact, I was just talking to someone at NPR who facetiously asked, ‘How’s your summer going so far?’” It seemed an appropriate atmosphere in which to ask a climate scientist what’s going on with the weather. And what weather has to do with climate change. Ranking: America's Greenest Cities Dozens of tornadoes blitzed the Midwest and Plains, here an aerial view of the destruction of a neighborhood in Wichita, Kansas, April 15, 2012. Let’s start with the basics, Heidi. What’s the difference between climate and weather? When I was at the Weather Channel, I got this question all the time. I think Mark Twain said it best: “Climate is what we expect; weather is what we get.” Climate is a statistical concept, so it can be hard for people to wrap their minds around it. When we talk about climate, we’re talking about the average of weather. We have an intuitive feel for climate “forecasts” in our own lives—we expect, in January, that July will be much warmer. And that’s accurate. Where things get tricky, of course, is over long time periods. I think of climate as being like an orchestra. It has so many elements, the way an orchestra has many sounds. The climate system is made up of components such as our atmosphere, the oceans, ice sheets, and the land surface. We experience natural climate variations, such as el Niño (the periodic warming of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean), which has an inherent time scale of three to seven years. In fact, we just came out of a la Niña episode (the opposite phase of el Niño, in which there is a cooling of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean), which is generally associated with drought along the southern portion of United States (including Texas, which saw its hottest, driest summer on record in 2011). Other natural climate variations include solar activity and volcanoes. So think of all these instruments, all these natural variations, at play in our climate. Now add to that a steady drumbeat of warming in our climate system caused by us. “ The “wait and see” approach may seem rational, but it’s incredibly risky. By the time we’re really seeing the full impact of global warming, it is too late to fix it. ” How do we know we are causing the recent warming trend? Didn’t we just come out of an Ice Age? Yes, there is tremendous natural climate variability. I studied the period known as the Holocene when I was working on my Ph.D. at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. That’s the past 10,000 years. The Holocene is known as having had a relatively stable climate compared with other time periods. The start of the Holocene also corresponds with the rise of complex human civilizations. It would seem we require this rather small envelope of climate stability to thrive. Continued Here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/22/earth-day-discussing-the-coming-climate-crisis-with-heidi-cullen.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_morning&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_morning&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet -- Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time. Have a great day, Tommy -- Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time. Have a great day, Tommy -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more.
