The climate dice are becoming more loaded – new evidence on extreme weather events

February 1, 2012

     By Duncan Green     

new paper by J. Hansen, M. Sato and R. Ruedy hot and very hot“The “climate dice” describing the chance of an unusually warm or cool season, relative to the climatology of 1951-1980, have progressively become more “loaded” during the past 30 years, coincident with increased global warming.  The most dramatic and  important change of the climate dice is the appearance of a new category of extreme climate  outliers.  These extremes were practically absent in the period of climatology, covering much  less than 1% of Earth’s surface.  Now summertime extremely hot outliers, more than three  standard deviations (σ) warmer than climatology, typically cover about 10% of the land area.  Thus there is no need to equivocate about the summer heat waves in Texas in 2011 and Moscow in 2010, which exceeded 3σ – it is nearly certain that they would not have occurred in the absence of global warming.  If global warming is not slowed from its current pace, by midcentury 3σ events will be the new norm and 5σ events will be common.” Plus some pretty hard-hitting writing in the body of the paper: “One of the major candidates in the current Presidential primary in the United States has declared that human-made global warming is a hoax, and he has issued an official Proclamation: ” I, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on those days for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal way of life.” Science cannot disprove the possibility of divine intervention. However, there is a relevant saying that “Heaven helps those who help themselves.”” [h/t Steve Jennings] ]]>

February 1, 2012
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Duncan Green
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