Did Climate Change Make Sandy Worse?
Dan Heyman, Public News Service-WV
http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/29102-1
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(11/01/12) CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Global climate change could have contributed to Hurricane Sandy's impact, climate scientists say, although some political leaders in West Virginia are unconvinced.
It's impossible to talk about a hurricane as having a single, simple cause, says Robert Henson, a National Center for Atmospheric Research meteorologist and author of "The Rough Guide to Climate Change," but climate change probably contributed.
"Climate change is never the total cause of any one weather event, but in many cases it plays a supporting role. Certainly the atmosphere as a whole globally is warming and moistening. The oceans are warming, and that provides a bit more fuel for hurricanes."
But Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, a longtime supporter of the coal industry, says his views on global warming have not changed.
"Not really, I mean, I'm not sure what's causing it. We always have weather events, and I'm not certain that it's because of climate change. I'm not a scientist."
West Virginia, like much of the mid-Atlantic, is digging out from the storm.
According to Henson, meteorologists haven't nailed down a link to big storms, because those individual events are more isolated and unpredictable. But he says the link to broader trends is more clearly established - including a tie to heavier rainfall in some places and worse drought in others.
"The warmer atmosphere is pulling more water out of the oceans. It's also pulling water out of dry land. Heavy rains and heavy snows are becoming a little more intense. At the same time, when it's dry it's tending to be dryer for longer periods."
One strange thing about Sandy may yet be linked to climate change, Henson says: A high-pressure system that pushed the storm.
"This blocking zone of high pressure up towards Newfoundland - eastern Canada - that forced the hurricane to go west into New Jersey. And there's no record of hurricanes ever taking that almost due-west path into the mid-Atlantic."
A free e-copy of the Rough Guide and more on climate-change issues are online at ucar.edu.
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