Earth Day: Discussing the Coming Climate Crisis

Earth Day: Discussing the Coming Climate Crisis With Heidi Cullen

Apr 22, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

Record-breaking heat. Floods. Droughts. Tornadoes. Don't believe the
skeptics—the evidence of climate change is all around us. An interview
with climatologist Heidi Cullen.

When I reached Heidi Cullen, chief climatologist for Climate Central,
she remarked on the glorious weather we were enjoying. But underneath
our pleasure at the sunshine and blossoms, we were both feeling uneasy
about the warmth. So far all 11 years of the 21st century have been
among the 13 warmest years on record, according to the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.


Cullen is in the habit of keeping a close eye on the weather:
Climate Central is a nonprofit science research organization
headquartered in Princeton, N.J. Before she joined them, Cullen, who
holds a doctorate from Columbia University, was the Weather Channel's
first on-air climate expert.

We had just been through a March of record-shattering heat, and we
were roasting through mid-April days. On top of that, according to the
U.S. Drought Monitor, most of the U.S. is experiencing an unusually
dry period, with southern Florida bone dry. More than 63 percent of
Georgia is in the worst two levels of drought, the highest of any
state.

Because of the dry, windy conditions, wildfires and brush fires have
been raging along the East Coast from New England to Florida;
billowing black clouds from New Jersey Meadowlands fires have been
visible from midtown Manhattan. And in much of New England, stream
flow levels were at record lows—with Vermont, though still reeling
from last summer's disastrous floods, abnormally dry.

"We may have just broken another record," Cullen says of the recent
heat wave. "That's what we do these days. We break records."

Cullen noted that her phone didn't stop ringing during the March heat
wave. Whenever there is an unusual weather event, journalists want to
know if it is caused by climate change. "In fact, I was just talking
to someone at NPR who facetiously asked, 'How's your summer going so
far?'"

It seemed an appropriate atmosphere in which to ask a climate
scientist what's going on with the weather. And what weather has to do
with climate change.

Ranking: America's Greenest Cities

Dozens of tornadoes blitzed the Midwest and Plains, here an aerial
view of the destruction of a neighborhood in Wichita, Kansas, April
15, 2012.

Let's start with the basics, Heidi. What's the difference between
climate and weather?

When I was at the Weather Channel, I got this question all the time. I
think Mark Twain said it best: "Climate is what we expect; weather is
what we get."

Climate is a statistical concept, so it can be hard for people to wrap
their minds around it. When we talk about climate, we're talking about
the average of weather. We have an intuitive feel for climate
"forecasts" in our own lives—we expect, in January, that July will be
much warmer. And that's accurate. Where things get tricky, of course,
is over long time periods.

I think of climate as being like an orchestra. It has so many
elements, the way an orchestra has many sounds. The climate system is
made up of components such as our atmosphere, the oceans, ice sheets,
and the land surface. We experience natural climate variations, such
as el Niño (the periodic warming of the eastern equatorial Pacific
Ocean), which has an inherent time scale of three to seven years. In
fact, we just came out of a la Niña episode (the opposite phase of el
Niño, in which there is a cooling of the eastern equatorial Pacific
Ocean), which is generally associated with drought along the southern
portion of United States (including Texas, which saw its hottest,
driest summer on record in 2011). Other natural climate variations
include solar activity and volcanoes.

So think of all these instruments, all these natural variations, at
play in our climate. Now add to that a steady drumbeat of warming in
our climate system caused by us.

"
The "wait and see" approach may seem rational, but it's incredibly
risky. By the time we're really seeing the full impact of global
warming, it is too late to fix it.


"
How do we know we are causing the recent warming trend? Didn't we just
come out of an Ice Age?

Yes, there is tremendous natural climate variability. I studied the
period known as the Holocene when I was working on my Ph.D. at
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. That's the
past 10,000 years. The Holocene is known as having had a relatively
stable climate compared with other time periods. The start of the
Holocene also corresponds with the rise of complex human
civilizations. It would seem we require this rather small envelope of
climate stability to thrive.

Continued Here:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/22/earth-day-discussing-the-coming-climate-crisis-with-heidi-cullen.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_morning&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_morning&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet

--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy



--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy

--
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