2011: Year of the flood (already)

[phantom power]

The year 2010 was one the worst years in world history for high-impact floods. But just three weeks into the new year, 2011 has already had an entire year's worth of mega-floods. I'll recap here six remarkable floods that have already occurred this year.

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(Brazil, Australia Queensland, Australia Victoria, 100-year flood in Sri Lanka, South Africa, Philippines)
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The year 2011 has begun with a remarkable number of high-impact floods world-wide, and much of the blame for this can be placed on the current La Niña event occurring in the Eastern Pacific. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center currently puts the La Niña event in the "strong" category, and whenever a La Niña or El Niño event reaches the strong category, major perturbations to global weather patterns occur. This typically results in record or near-record flooding in one or more regions of the globe. When one combines the impact of La Niña with the increase of global ocean temperatures of 0.5°C (0.9°F) over the past 50 years, which has put 4% more water vapor into the atmosphere since 1970, the result is a much increased chance of unprecedented floods. A 4% increase in atmospheric moisture may not sound like much, but it turns out that precipitation will increase by about 8% with that 4% moisture increase. Critically, it is the extreme rainfall events that tend to supply the increased rainfall. For example, (Groisman et al., 2004) found a 20% increase in very heavy (top 1%) precipitation events over the U.S. in the past century, and a 36% rise in cold season (October - April) "extreme" precipitation events (those in the 99.9% percentile--1 in 1000 events. These extreme rainfall events are the ones most likely to cause floods.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1731

[LiberalEsto]

1. Should we be building an ark?

or a lot of arks?

[Stargazer99]

2. We should be kicking RW conservative rears

Just because we've had hot weather, cons whine there is no global warming. What the self-centered selfish idiots refused to hear is that weather would become more extreme, in both directions. But oh hell, why listen to scientist when your well-heeled base can make more money. You may call the American Indian a savage but they at least understand to care for your inviroment. A hell of a lot smarter than large corporate businesses.

[LawnKorn]

3. You got that right "weather would become more extreme, in both directions"

Carbon Dioxide is retaining heat in the atmosphere. This places more energy in the system that manifests itself in severe weather events like the ones noted in Russia, Pakistan last summer and now the cold events in Europe and the American north east.

Global warming is not limited to rising temperatures.