THE ERA OF THE SUPERSTORM: WHY ARE LARGE WEATHER SYSTEMS SO THREATENING?

courtesy : yahoo

Climate change is on everyone's mind, and mouth.  And it should be. Many of the metereological events of the past couple of years are eye-openers, and they have brought unusual and widespread destruction.

Now climatologists are weighing in, trying to understand why global warming is causing such large and destructive phenomena.

One of the things that scientists have noticed is that certain large systems once formed, no longer behaved in a predictable manner, or at least in a manner that could offer sufficient clues using standard models.  And some of these large weather system, seem to stall in place inside of moving or dissipating as they once did.  

But why?

International scientists are now able to relate that they have traced some of these unusual weather phenomena to a disruption in the air currents in the northern hemisphere.  

Air motion plays a crucial part in the mid latitudes of the Earth. The air currents usually move in a wave like pattern that circulates around the planet, oscillating between the tropical latitude and the polar circle.  

What was observed in the latest observations was that the air currents seemed to stop, so that instead of drawing cooler air behind the warmer air mass in the weather system, they just stay in place, thereby keeping the underlying regions in a heat zone for longer times.  

This could have grave consequences for world farming.  The agricultural systems rely on the constant change, and the colder air brought in behind the heat, since that not only brings rain, but also colder air.  Most crops we use today in agriculture are not heat adapted, and now it seems that the increased heat is also causing tree deaths and stress and also more fires.  

In 2010, a deathly heat wave swept Russia killing dozens of people and causing immense fires both in Russia, and in Greece, the year before.  

Global warming, unlike its name, does not signify an evenly distributed change in the temperature.  Microclimates can be affected much more significantly than other locales.  But as the globe warms, the temperature differentials between the pole and the equator flatten, so that there is less air flow between the two around the globe.  Also because the land masses can cool and heat faster than water, there is a substantial differential in the water/land interaction, with the colder air on the ocean surface acting as a block for the escape of the warmer air within the continents.

Some say the study, which looked at a time span of 32 years, is too short.  That in effect means that mixed in with observed and perceived climate changes, some natural oscillations in the weather patterns may contribute in the observed changes.

Source: France 24. / 2.26.13 // National Academy of Science