Extreme weather becomes the norm - what can you do?

. . a sky that has turned red due to greenhouse gases, while the land is flooded. The handful of
people who survived are standing by helplessly on higher grounds, in despair and without hope,
while one figure turns to me in panic and pain, uttering nothing but a silent scream …
(comment by Sam Carana, March 8, 2012, on auction of the Scream, by Edvard Munch)

Symptoms

Torrential rains in some regions are causing massive floods while in other locales record droughts are occurring with higher frequency and severity and areal extent around the globe. Global food production is being hit hard, leading to large price increases and political instability. Areas under drought are experiencing numerous massive forest fires of incredible ferocity.

Causes

The statistics of extreme weather events have changed for the worst due to changes in the location, speed, and waviness of the jet streams which guide weather patterns and separate cold and dry northern air from warm and moist southern air. The jet streams have changed since the equator to north-pole temperature difference has decreased due to the huge temperature rise in the Arctic.

The huge temperature rise in the Arctic is due to a collapse in the area of highly reflective snow and ice, which is caused by melting. The melting is from warming from the increase of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel burning. The Arctic sea ice and spring snow cover will vanish within a few years and the weather extremes will increase at least 10x.

What can you do?

Go talk to you politicians and friends about climate change and the need to slash fossil fuel emissions. Immediately. Cut and paste my comments above and post them on facebook, send them to newspapers, and educate yourself on the science behind all the above linkages. Leave my name on or take it off and plagiarize all you want, just get this knowledge out there…

From an unmuzzled climate scientist…
Paul Beckwith, B.Eng, M.Sc. (Physics),
Ph.D. student (Climatology) and Part-time Professor,
University of Ottawa

originally posted as a comment under the CBCnews post:
Calgary braces for flooding, orders communities evacuated 

Related

- The Tornado Connection to Climate Change
- President Obama, here’s a climate plan!
- Diagram of Doom
- Polar jet stream appears hugely deformed

- Ten Dangers of Global Warming (originally posted March 8, 2007)