Free Republic

Without climate change, the heat waves impacting the U.S.-Mexico region and Southern Europe this month would have been “virtually” impossible, according to new research. The research, from the World Weather Attribution initiative, also found that heat impacting China would have been “about a 1 in 250 year event.” At the start of July, heat waves hit the Southwestern U.S., as well as Mexico, Southern Europe and China. In California’s Death Valley, temperatures reached more than 125 degrees Fahrenheit, while Phoenix has seen 25 days straight with temperatures of at least 110 degrees. As all this occurred, the World Weather Attribution...

At the beginning of the week, we told readers the dog days of summer have finally arrived with above-average temperatures for most of the country. By late Thursday, watch/warning/advisory alerts for dangerous heat extended to nearly 200 million Americans as multiple heat domes scorch the Pacific Northwest, Central states, and East Coast. “Dangerous heat and humidity in the Northwest, Northeast, and central portions of the CONUS have prompted Excessive Heat Warnings and Heat Advisories. Severe thunderstorms will impact the areas from the Midwest into the Great Lakes through Thursday,” the National Weather Service (NWS) wrote on its website.“Around 195 million...

There are waves piling on waves in the weather.A new press release tells us that there have been an “exceptional” number of weather extremes in summer. Weather extremes in the summer — such as the record heat wave in the United States that hit corn farmers and worsened wildfires in 2012 — have reached an exceptional number in the last ten years. Human-made global warming can explain a gradual increase in periods of severe heat, but the observed change in the magnitude and duration of some events is not so easily explained. Heatwaves lend themselves to headlines. Not only are...

Scientists are increasingly confident that the uptick in heat waves and heavier rainfall is linked to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, posing a heightened risk to the world’s population, according to two reports issued in the past week. On Wednesday, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a 594-page study suggesting that when it comes to weather observations since 1950 there has been a “change in some extremes,” which stem in part from global warming. [text excerpted] But the IPCC team projects that there is a 90 to 100 percent probability that sea level rise “will contribute to upward trends...

Government officials are evaluating and revising disaster plans around the United States in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, just as they did after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. While war and automobiles kill more people than nature, find out what natural disasters top scientists’ worry lists. #10 Pacific Northwest Megathrust Earthquake Geologists know it’s just a matter of time before another 9.0 or larger earthquake strikes somewhere between Northern California and Canada. The shaking would be locally catastrophic, but the biggest threat is the tsunami that would ensue from a fault line that’s seismically identical to the one that...