MessageToEagle.com - The past decade has been one of unprecedented weather extremes. Scientists of the Potsdam Institute
for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany argue that the high incidence of extremes is not merely accidental.
From the many single events a pattern emerges. At least for extreme rainfall and heat waves the link with human-caused
global warming is clear, the scientists show in a new analysis of scientific evidence in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Less clear is the link between warming and storms, despite the observed increase in the intensity of hurricanes.
In 2011 alone, the US was hit by 14 extreme weather events which caused damages exceeding one billion dollars each –
in several states the months of January to October were the wettest ever recorded.
Japan also registered record rainfalls, while the Yangtze river basin in China suffered a record drought.
Similar record-breaking events occurred also in previous years.
In 2010, Western Russia experienced the hottest
summer in centuries, while in Pakistan and Australia fell record-breaking amounts of rain
2003 saw Europe´s hottest summer in at least half a millennium and in 2002, the weather station of Zinnwald-Georgenfeld
measured more rain in one day than ever before recorded anywhere in Germany – what followed was the worst flooding of
the Elbe river for centuries.
“The question is whether these weather extremes are coincidental or a result of climate change,” says Dim Coumou, lead
author of the article. “Global warming can generally not be proven to cause individual extreme events – but in the sum
of events the link to climate change becomes clear.” This is what his analysis of data and published studies shows.
“It is not a question of yes or no, but a question of probabilities,” Coumou explains. The recent high incidence of
weather records is no longer normal, he says.
Credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/markusram/
“It´s like a game with loaded dice,” says Coumou. “A six can appear every now and then, and you never know when it happens.
But now it appears much more often, because we have changed the dice.” The past week illustrates this: between March
13th and 19th alone, historical heat records were exceeded in more than a thousand places in North America.
The scientists base their analysis on three pillars: basic physics, statistical analysis and computer simulations.
Elementary physical principles already suggest that a warming of the atmosphere leads to more extremes.
For example, warm air can hold more moisture until it rains out.
Secondly, clear statistical trends can be found in
temperature and precipitation data, the scientists explain. And thirdly, detailed computer simulations also confirm
the relation between warming and records in both temperature and precipitation.
Credits: University of Maryland
With warmer ocean temperatures, tropical storms – called typhoons or hurricanes, depending on the region – should
increase in intensity but not in number, according to the current state of knowledge. In the past decade, several
record-breaking storms occurred, for example hurricane Wilma in 2004.
But the dependencies are complex and not yet
fully understood. The observed strong increase in the intensity of tropical storms in the North Atlantic between
1980 and 2005, for example, could be caused not just by surface warming but by a cooling of the upper atmosphere.
Furthermore, there are questions about the precision and reliability of historic storm data.
Overall, cold extremes decrease with global warming, the scientists found. But this does not compensate for the increase in heat extremes.
“Single weather extremes are often related to regional processes, like a blocking high pressure system or natural
phenomena like El Niño,“ says Stefan Rahmstorf, co-author of the article and chair of the Earth System Analysis
department at PIK.
“These are complex processes that we are investigating further. But now these processes unfold
against the background of climatic warming. That can turn an extreme event into a record-breaking event.”
Unusual Star Discovered In The Lupus Constellation
For more than four hundred years, astronomers have used telescopes to study the great variety of stars in our galaxy.
Millions of distant suns have been catalogued. There are dwarf stars, giant stars, dead stars, exploding stars, binary stars; by now, you might suppose that every kind of star in the Milky Way had been seen.
That's why a recent discovery is so surprising.
Black Plants Could Exist On Alien Worlds With Two Suns
We have previously seen what auroras might like on alien worlds.
This time we examine how life on planets in binary star systems can evolve.
Earth-like planets with two or three suns would have multiple sources of light that could be used for photosynthesis.
This means plants on such worlds could be dark, even completely black.
Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the
course of modern astronomy. And, at least one famous astronomer of the time lamented that the discovery had shattered his world view.
Hidden Misshapen Celestial "Wonder"
It is one of the brightest and strangest objects in the Milky Way - the corpse of a star that exploded around 1000 years ago.
Only a handful of such young supernova remnants are known.
The object named G350.1-0.3 is also incredibly small (only eight light years across) and young in astronomical terms.
Giant Ice Planets Have More Water Than Previously Thought
A new study shows that current extimates of ice-giant planetary interiors overstate water's
compressibility by as much as 30 percent. The findings could dramatically change our understanding of the physical properties of such worlds.
Black Holes With No 'Table Manners' Eat Two Courses At Once!
It is still unknown how the supermassive black holes (SMBH) in galaxy centres accrete gas and grow.
Researchers from the University of Leicester (UK) and Monash University in Australia have investigated how some black holes got so big so fast that they are billions of times heavier than the sun.
Living Earth Simulator - Supercomputer Predicting The Future
In Douglas Adams book the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy we encounter a machine called Deep Thought. It is the most powerful computer ever built. Deep Thought is capable of answering questions
concerning life, the Universe, and simply everything. Now scientists are planning to create a similar machine. It is called the Living Earth Simulator (LES).
Big Bang On Earth: Make Room For The World's Largest Telescope
Astronomers have begun to blast 3 million cubic feet of rock from a mountaintop in the Chilean Andes to make room for what will be the world's largest telescope when completed near the end of the decade.
Astronomical Mystery - Tremendous Explosion And Appearance Of Odd Rings
Twenty five years ago, on 1987 February 23, the brightest supernova of modern times was observed in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The collision occurred at speeds near 60 million kilometers per hour and shock-heats the ring material causing it to glow.
Over time, astronomers have watched and waited for the expanding debris from this tremendous stellar explosion to crash into previously expelled material...
MessageToEagle.com - The past decade has been one of unprecedented weather extremes. Scientists of the Potsdam Institute
for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany argue that the high incidence of extremes is not merely accidental.
A new, one of its kind study conducted by scienstists
reveals what many have long considered to be plausible, namely that life originated in outer space.
We have previously seen that
For more than four hundred years, astronomers have used telescopes to study the great variety of stars in our galaxy.
Millions of distant suns have been catalogued. There are dwarf stars, giant stars, dead stars, exploding stars, binary stars; by now, you might suppose that every kind of star in the Milky Way had been seen.
That's why a recent discovery is so surprising.
We have previously seen what 
Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the
course of modern astronomy. And, at least one famous astronomer of the time lamented that the discovery had shattered his world view.
It is one of the brightest and strangest objects in the Milky Way - the corpse of a star that exploded around 1000 years ago.
Only a handful of such young supernova remnants are known.
The object named G350.1-0.3 is also incredibly small (only eight light years across) and young in astronomical terms.
A new study shows that current extimates of ice-giant planetary interiors overstate water's
compressibility by as much as 30 percent. The findings could dramatically change our understanding of the physical properties of such worlds.
It is still unknown how the supermassive black holes (SMBH) in galaxy centres accrete gas and grow.
Researchers from the University of Leicester (UK) and Monash University in Australia have investigated how some black holes got so big so fast that they are billions of times heavier than the sun.
In Douglas Adams book the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy we encounter a machine called Deep Thought. It is the most powerful computer ever built. Deep Thought is capable of answering questions
concerning life, the Universe, and simply everything. Now scientists are planning to create a similar machine. It is called the Living Earth Simulator (LES).
Astronomers have begun to blast 3 million cubic feet of rock from a mountaintop in the Chilean Andes to make room for what will be the world's largest telescope when completed near the end of the decade.
Twenty five years ago, on 1987 February 23, the brightest supernova of modern times was observed in the Large Magellanic Cloud.