Climate Changes Suck. Share your experiences

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Pebble,

We know climate change is occuring, anecdotes add nothing at this point.

[Larry of the Lawn]

They are interesting though. It seems like in the Northeast the last 5 years the weather has been more extreme than in the rest of my lifetime. 4 of the last 5 winters we've had over 2 or 3 feet of snow on the ground for weeks at a time, the exception being the winter of 2011/2012 when we had almost no snow and the winter was crazy warm here (my work depends on the weather being over 28-30 F on winter days and that year I worked outside from nov-april missing maybe a day or two. contrast that to this year where i've been unable to work for the bulk of the last 3 months). This february has been the coldest month ever recorded in CT history.

Same thing with the summers, they've been quite hot, and the heat waves seem to last longer. The rains all come at once. Maybe it's all mental and about subjective perception but it seems to me at least that in my area the weather has tended to more extremes.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

Pebble,

We know climate change is occuring, anecdotes add nothing at this point.

maybe but although individual anecdotes may not be anything more than normal weather pattens, the more of them we have helps to build up a picture a lot of average people can understand more easily than cold facts and numbers.

The facts say the climate is changing. the Sciences says its going to change some more. The anecdotes can make it more real and maybe make us try to do something about it.

[Ghosts Companion]

I was raised her then moved away for over a decade. Since I moved back in 2004 the weather is nothing like it was before I moved. There is no longer seasons just hot summer and cold winter. We also tend to have more ice than I ever recall and less snow. The wind blows all the time which only ever happened in April. We also always had tornado's but they were always smaller and jumped around. There was damage and death but not as drastic as we saw in 2011 with the EF5. Now the more frequent tornado warnings could be partially based out of fear due to the devastation we went through but they do seem to happen more and the tornado's cause more damage.

Now deciding if this is climate change or just a regular weather pattern, I cannot say. I can only base on the patterns since 1971 (Oddly enough a year with another big tornado). It could be a 200 year pattern, but regardless there is a change.

[mcbigski]

It's probably not climate change. But Connecticut sure has been snowy the last month or so. Same thing happened last year, where there was no snow, or snow that melted in a day or two, through late November and December, and then some time after New Years, it's storm after storm after storm.

I'm really looking forward to 35 degrees and rainy, which is the forecast for Sunday.

All that being said, I don't think it's significantly different than it was in the 70s. We got walloped with snow when I was lad. I remember the blizzard of 78, so maybe I have a longer perspective than some.

[ThinkerX]

Hmmm... should I bore / irritate the folks of this board or not? What the heck...

During my college days back in the 1980's, 'climate change' was something we looked at, back before even this became politicized. Now, what follows is what we deduced THEN, and in my view PARTIALLY accounts for SOME of what's going on now, at least for North America.

Harkin back to the 19th century, when bold mariners tried to find the 'North West Passage' between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by sailing along the coast of the arctic ocean. Tales of heroism, stupidity, and even cannibalism. And lots and lots of accounts about how thick the ice was. Ice pack 20 feet thick (a bit under 7 meters for the metric folks) during the WARM season. And some of these crews actually cut channels through this stuff. Ok, that was the 19th century.

Fast forward to the middle of the 20th century. Oil was discovered along the northern Alaskan coast, and the oil companies were bound and determined to get to it. To do so, they sent huge piles of stuff - bunkers, drilling rigs, pipe, vehicles to that area via barge, passing through some of the same waters as the explorers of a century previous. But this time, the pack ice, on average, was only four feet thick - a little over a meter.

We looked this data over in that long ago college class, and made some simple linear projections. First, we concluded that by around 2000 - 2010 the Arctic Ocean would be more or less ice free in the summer months (which is more or less the case.)

Next projection was: what does this mean, climate wise, having open water where there used to be snow/ice? Long and the short of it is, you get a lot more moisture in the atmosphere. Moisture that is going to want to fall somewhere. And given the prevailing air currents, that moisture would be carried away south, to colder lands. Yes, I said colder. Because south of the arctic ocean is Hudson's Bay, which to all intents and purposes is a giant cold sink - it was also 'ground zero' for an ice sheet covering much of eastern North America during the last ice age. So...these moisture laden clouds pass through this cold sink...and snow or rain fall somewhere, likely south of that. This also mucks up other weather systems influenced by everything from the Gulf Stream to El Nino, which was beyond the scope of that long ago class, though if I remember right, one thing we talked about was a potential long term drought in the Midwest.

That was then. Big thing I check in on every year or three these days is the Greenland Ice Cap. This mess has the potential to seriously screw over the folks in Europe (and maybe flood New York City and other east cost metropolises, but who cares). What is going on here is this ice cap is melting at a rate just shy of exponential. Sea level is likely to go up a foot or two (30 - 60 centimeters) over the next few decades because of this, but that's the secondary concern. Big problem is, this is very cold fresh water being dumped on top of a critically important warm salt water current - the Gulf Stream. Without the mitigating effects of the Gulf Stream, most of coastal Europe turns into a deep freeze each winter...like Alaska. And this influx of fresh water is driving the Gulf Stream deeper, which means the folks in Euro-Land should be experiencing more severe winters.

But what do I know?

[rocksniffer]

If you don't like the anecdotes, look at the numbers. This decade has been the hottest one on record, and it's the continuation of a trend.

As for anecdotes, 50 years ago my mom was always pleased to see roses blooming on her favourite rosebush by her birthday, June 17. For many years now, the rosebushes not only have been blooming far earlier, they have in fact faded and died by June 17, and are budding for a second go-round of blooms. And that's just in my lifetime.

i know of several similar happenings here is the glorious southeastern portion of the us...sadly birds are suffering a like fate as your Mere's roses because when flowers and the flower loving insects alter their schedule it filters down to insect -eating bird nesting and chick raising time

TM,

Yes. I do not argue that climate change is occuring. It is. I state that weather anicdotes do not offer proof for or against climate change.

Scot, you and i share a city and it seems to me that over the last decades we have seen more radical weather here than when i first ventured into the midlands in 86...over decades weather does = climate, in my not so humble opinion...

I may not agree with Scott, But I will defend his right for the freedom of spelling words in his unique way according to his beliefs.

Anecdotes can offer an indication that something may be happening and gives us the basis to form a hypothesis to test with hard data.

i agree with both of these statements...it is known

:smoking:

[rocksniffer]

my first double post...and i blame twitchy fingers and slow response...

[mcbigski]

That was then. Big thing I check in on every year or three these days is the Greenland Ice Cap. This mess has the potential to seriously screw over the folks in Europe (and maybe flood New York City and other east cost metropolises, but who cares). What is going on here is this ice cap is melting at a rate just shy of exponential. Sea level is likely to go up a foot or two (30 - 60 centimeters) over the next few decades because of this, but that's the secondary concern.

On the other hand Antarctic sea ice was running above average in 2014. I'd be very comfortable taking the under on a 45cm global sea level rise over the next 2 decades.

[ThinkerX]

On the other hand Antarctic sea ice was running above average in 2014. I'd be very comfortable taking the under on a 45cm global sea level rise over the next 2 decades.

As pointed out, the rise in sea level is secondary to the deep freeze caused by the suppression of the Gulf Current. But, regardless, sea level is going to increase, at least for the next few decades, given the rate the Greenland Ice Cap is melting.