Australia floods a glimpse of warmer future
STOCKHOLM, 13 January 2011 (AP) — Though you can’t make a direct link between Australia’s killer floods and climate change, they do hold a warning for the future: Scientists predict such extreme weather events will increase both in intensity and frequency as the planet warms. Raging floodwaters have swamped thousands of homes and businesses in Queensland, leaving at least 25 people dead and dozens more missing since late November. Rail lines and highways have been washed away in what is shaping up to become Australia’s costliest natural disaster. The flooding follows a spate of severe natural disasters in the past year. While the most deadly was Haiti’s earthquake, extreme weather also killed thousands of people across the globe, including a scorching heat wave that choked Russia in the summer and devastating floods that engulfed more than 60,000 square miles (150,000 square kilometers) in Pakistan. “The Earth is delivering a message to us. And the message is that more extreme weather is becoming the norm rather than the exception,” said John Magrath, a climate change researcher at British charity Oxfam. He said there is a misconception that global warming only means higher temperatures. “It actually means more energy in the climatic system, which stimulates extremes and more chaotic behavior,” Magrath said. Droughts and floods are expected to become more severe as global temperatures climb. Less clear is the impact on wind patterns and ocean currents, factors that could alter climate in potentially dramatic ways not fully understood yet. Last year tied with 2005 as the warmest on record, with combined global land and ocean surface temperatures rising 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit (0.62 degrees Celsius) above normal, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday. … Reinsurer Munich Re counted nearly 1,000 natural disasters in 2010 — nine-tenths of them weather-related — the second highest number since 1980. The resulting economic losses totaled $130 billion, the German company said earlier this month. “The high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures both globally and in different regions of the world provide further indications of advancing climate change,” Munich Re said. …
