| |
|
|
|
Search
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Contact
Jim: jdipeso@rep.org
(253) 740-2066 / 2010
Archive / 2009
Archive / 2008
Archive / 2007
Archive / 2006
Archive / 2005
Archive
What Caused the Big Chill?
January 15, 2010
This
has not been a happy winter for Florida’s farmers. Nearly two
weeks of abnormally cold weather has wrought serious damage to citrus
orchards, row crops, cane fields, nursery stock, and even tropical fish
farms.
Today, Governor Charlie Crist put in a request for federal disaster aid
covering all 67 of Florida’s counties.
Farmers aren’t the only ones complaining. The tourists who sought
Florida sun and balm over the holidays to escape the Northeast’s dreary
grayness weren’t pleased with the coat and gloves weather either.
Across the Atlantic, Brits battled deep snow and frigid temperatures.
There’s a striking photograph taken by a NASA satellite January 7
showing all of England, Scotland, and Wales covered in a white mantle.
Naturally, climate change denialists made hay while the sun didn’t
shine. We’ve told you, they say, that global warming stopped in 1998.
Talk show barkers and bloggers provocateur online know more about
climate change than climatologists do, see.
OK, what really happened? Turns out that while the southeastern U.S.
and the British Isles were experiencing abnormal cold, the Arctic
regions were experiencing abnormal warmth. Since few people and no
self-important American pundits live in the Arctic, the abnormal warmth
went largely unreported.
The abnormal temperature shifts resulted from a climate pattern called
the Arctic Oscillation. The oscillation flips between “positive” and
“negative” phases. An unusually severe negative phase drove cold air
south over the holidays.
But not everywhere. While Floridians were reaching for wool caps,
Greeks and Turks were turning on fans to deal with unusual warmth in
the Mediterranean region and, more broadly, over North Africa and
southwest Asia.
Neither the unusual cold in Florida nor the unusual warmth in Athens
prove anything about climate change.
The lesson has been stated many times before, but bears repeating.
Short-term, localized weather fluctuations are not reliable guides to
long-term global climate trends, any more than sampling a handful of
your relatives would yield a reliable projection about an upcoming
election.
|
|
