Elaine Meinel Supkis
Since I do farm-related stuff, I am hyper aware of the weather. The drought/flood cycle continues. We had floods last fall, early snowstorms then a long, dry winter. In the news, Antarctica air temperatures is warmer, coral reefs are stressed so badly by warm water, they are rapidly dying, the Atlantic hurricane season will be bad but not as wild as last summer (unless the sun gets more active), global warming is manifesting itself in many ways.
A one-two punch of bleaching from record hot water followed by disease has killed ancient and delicate coral in the biggest loss of reefs scientists have ever seen in Caribbean waters.Researchers from around the globe are scrambling to figure out the extent of the loss. Early conservative estimates from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands find that about one-third of the coral in official monitoring sites has recently died.
"It's an unprecedented die-off," said National Park Service fisheries biologist Jeff Miller, who last week checked 40 stations in the Virgin Islands. "The mortality that we're seeing now is of the extremely slow-growing reef-building corals. These are corals that are the foundation of the reef ... We're talking colonies that were here when Columbus came by have died in the past three to four months."
The marine ecosystems have been very stressed out this last decade. We also forget about other problems, in particular industrial and human waste pollution, not to mention over-fishing all the open seas.
Stephen Lunn
March 31, 2006
THE Great Barrier Reef is far more resilient to rising water temperatures than scientists feared, with less than 1 per cent of its coral affected by bleaching after the hot summer.Scientists had predicted that as much as 60 per cent of the reef's coral might suffer bleaching, which occurs when warm temperatures rob the living coral of nutrition.
But professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, from the University of Queensland's Centre for Marine Studies, said yesterday that samples he had collected from the various parts of the reef showed the fears were unfounded.
Professor Hoegh-Guldberg's survey showed coral north of the Keppel Islands near Rockhampton had escaped bleaching, and less than 1 per cent of the outer reef had been affected.
Of course, this was after only one summer of very hot temperatures, namely, now, since it is summer there when it is winter here. But just as the surprisingly strong cyclones show this year down under, that if this situation continues for ten years and instead of being an "anomolie", this becomes the new standard?
A spokesman for conservation organisation WWF, Richard Leck, still offered a warning if ocean temperatures rose."By 2050, unless we build the resistance of the reef, we will be faced with a pretty diminished resource," Mr Leck said.
The air over Antarctica is warming even faster than in other parts of the world, according to an analysis of 30 years of weather balloon data.While surface warming has been reported in parts of Antarctica, this is the first report of broad-scale climate change across the whole continent, the British Antarctic Survey says in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
The weather balloon data show a warming of 0.9 degree to 1.3 degree Fahrenheit per decade over the last 30 years. By contrast, the average worldwide temperature has risen 0.2 degree per decade in that time, according to the paper.
We watched The March of the Penguins and I noticed, while examining the background landscape, even when the winter was descending, the ice formations were awfully thinned out. And the summer scenes it was obvious the ice was melting. The thinning of the ozone layer means the solar rays strike the ice, melting it even though the temperature is low. Even here on my mountain, we get this effect, when the sun is shining brightly, even when it is near zero, the snow on the roof of the house and the top layer of snow, melts. This is why we get icicles. It can get so wam, if the wind isn't blowing, one can go outside into the sun without a coat on, even, but the minute you move into a shadow, brrr.
Last winter was the warmest ever recorded in our country. Here are the long range forecast maps. Not that they are predicting a warmer than usual winter yet again, next year, for the entire winter. The long drought in the Southwest and much of the Midwest is predicted to worsen. The forecast is also for normal or less than normal rain for the entire coming year except severe drought in the same places that had it last year and flooding during hurricane season across Florida and up the entire east coast, they believe the hurricanes won't all run up the Mississippi valley this time around.
The coming season, which starts officially on June 1, is not likely to be as bad, experts say. One noted forecaster, William Gray of Colorado State University, has predicted this year will produce 17 tropical storms and hurricanes.
Hurricanes draw their energy from warm water and the Atlantic, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico were unusually warm last year.
"The Atlantic Ocean is warm right now but it is not as warm as it was last year," U.S. National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield said on the opening day of a regional convention of the World Meteorological Organization in San Juan.
Of course, last year, it wasn't terrifically warm until after April! So we will wait and see what happens next. If the sun is particularily busy with solar flares, this changes the weather equation pretty quickly, relatively speaking.
Here is a map showing the unusual number of record rain/heat events that happened this last year.
Here is this year's drought map. It looks pretty nasty in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas and most of Nebraska. Right now, the Atlantic states are developing into a drought. This is most annoying since I live there.
To enlarge image, click on the picture.
This is another picture of my driveway at the top of the fields. This is supposed to be "mud season" but it is turning into dust devil season. We had no real winter, we had snow at the beginning, then a freakish, warm January, our springs flowed like crazy, the rivers ran high in spring floods and the trees wondered if it was time to put out buds.
Then it became very cold, below zero off and on for a month but precious little snow. A big blow of snow would be followed by instant melting and then back to below zero. So for much of the coldest part of winter which was late February to mid March, our fields sat high and dry, the grass exposed to the freezing temperatures without their comfortable snowy white blanket and they dried out so we are now in a fire alert, people lighting brush fires can have them rage out of control, for example. I own a section of forest and we worry about forest fires for there have been none such here for over 100 years and there is a very deep leaf litter in the woods.
The springs usually fill my ponds right about now but this year, there isn't a drop of water going into them. The rivers are running so low, we can see the rocks, at this rate, they will dry up in summer, entirely! This isn't good.
Just the other day, a woman burning brush in North Carolina was burned to death when her fire raged out of control. This winter's huge toll in towns and people burned in the Plains States was quite significant. If this drought continues, it will be more common until all the grass is spent and then the dust will begin to blow. One of the bellweathers which sets the world's thermometer is dust, the drier it is, the more dust blows and the particulate matter screens the sun and brings down temperatures so we might go into a cycle of much colder weather simply due to this factor, thanks to the increasing droughts in many places. Global warming puts more moisture into the air and water into the seas but thanks to increased dynamics, these come increasingly as great floods rather than a gentle rain. And where are our "April showers"?
It looks like we are due this week for violent thunderstorms. That is summer weather!
Weather changes all depends on the Global warming and also this day by day increasing population and the mail reason of this Global warming is forest............?
Rockhampton Weather
Posted by: Rockhampton Weather | February 22, 2010 at 02:23 AM