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Warming to Cause Harsher Weather, Study Says
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Oct 18, 2005 11:27pm |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - Washington Post |
| News Date | Wednesday, October 19, 2005 05:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 18, 2005; Page A02
Extreme weather events -- including heat waves, floods and drought -- are likely to become more common over the next century in the United States because of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study by Purdue University researchers.
The analysis, which is being published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, examines how heat-trapping gases linked to climate change may intensify precipitation, drought and other weather conditions. Instances of extreme heat will probably increase throughout the country, the scientists concluded, and many areas will experience heavier downpours even if rain becomes less frequent.
"I would be thrilled to be wrong," said Noah S. Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at the Purdue Climate Change Research Center and the university's department of earth and atmospheric sciences. "It's definitely going to be more extreme hot temperatures."
The four-person research team, which included two scientists from the Earth Systems Physics Group at the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, compared U.S. weather patterns from 1961 to 1985 with models of future weather patterns from 2071 to 2095.
Under this scenario, which assumes the amount of carbon dioxide in the air will roughly double over the next 100 years, the coldest days of the year in the Northeast will be as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, and the temperatures currently experienced on the 18 hottest days of the year in the Washington area will prevail for two months. |
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