Science Projects Increasingly
Extreme Weather
"You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe."
"You take the red pill and
you stay in Wonderland and I'll show you how deep the
rabbit-hole goes."
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CLIMATE CHANGE LEADS TO HEAVY WEATHER
ASHEVILLE, North Carolina,
September 26, 2000 (ENS) - As the global climate changes, extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, heat waves, heavy rainfall, tropical storms and hurricanes are expected to increase, a team of scientists said Friday. The team, led by David Easterling of the National Climatic Data Center, reached this conclusion after reviewing hundreds of studies that used data and climate models to examine past and future changes in climate extremes. Their work, which includes reviews of studies using observations, modeling, and impacts, is reported in the September 22 edition of the journal "Science.""Our review shows consistency between our climate models and what we have observed in the 20th century. Models of 21st century climate suggest that many of these changes in climate extremes are likely to continue," Easterling said. "We also found that extreme weather events have had increasing impact on human health, welfare, and financial losses. This trend is likely to become more intense in the years to come both as the climate continues to change, and society continues to become more vulnerable to weather and climate extremes." Recent years have seen weather events cause large losses of life and tremendous increases in economic hardship. Losses caused by catastrophes, defined as greater than $5 million, have grown in the U.S. from about $100 million a year in the 1950s to $6 billion per year in the 1990s. The annual number of catastrophes grew from 10 per year in the 1950s to 35 per year in the 1990s.