'Extreme Weather': You Do Need a Weatherman
By TIM CAHILL
Published: January 30, 2005
HE sky is falling, temperatures are more extreme, tornadoes ravage the land, Buffalo is probably buried in snow at this very moment, and it is flooding somewhere in the world. Hailstones the size of pumpkins -- yes, pumpkins -- may be pummeling Bangladesh right now. Your town's temperature may hit a record high today. Or maybe a record low. Or your temperatures may reach a record high and a record low in a single 24-hour period. It happens: not necessarily at the same time all over the world -- that's a disaster movie scenario -- but pretty much every year there is a spate of appallingly anomalous weather somewhere, convincing most of us that the weather is changing, and for the worse.
In 2004, Florida was pounded with a record four hurricanes in a single season, a disaster that cost 117 lives and destroyed 25,000 homes. In early January, five days of torrential rains in California triggered mudslides that killed at least 10 people. The same storm brought blizzard conditions to North Dakota, where the wind chill dropped to 50 below. And while it was more a geological event than a climatological one, a magnitude-9 earthquake off the north coast of Sumatra generated a tsunami that has, to date, killed some 150,000 people.
Christopher C. Burt, the author of the excellent and addictive ''Extreme Weather: A Guide & Record Book,'' strives to put all this in context. He reminds us that, eons ago, the earth experienced some mind-boggling temperatures: there were glaciers in Wisconsin, and palm trees littered northern Canada. That's climate, of course, not weather. Weather happens in the short term, and we humans haven't been keeping reliable records all that long. ''In the United States,'' Burt writes, ''weather records have been maintained by the official weather services since about 1870. In the 50 preceding years, records were kept intermittently by individuals and by some institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution.'' The figures we have ''represent only a fraction of human experience with weather,'' but may be used as a ''yardstick'' to determine climatic trends. By this yardstick, the weather is not becoming more extreme.
Burt, who was born in Manhattan in October 1954, during New York's most severe hurricane on record, was a protege of the weather historian David M. Ludlum and studied meteorology at the University of Wisconsin. The man is obsessed with violent weather in the pleasantly dotty, accuracy-infatuated manner of someone in the throes of elucidating a lifelong passion. And while extreme weather fascinates him, Burt himself seems to have no desire actually to experience it. He lives in Oakland, described as ''a city of unremitting weather dullness.'' (Earthquakes, apparently, have no dominion over his imagination.)
Burt spends but a single page on global warming. ''There is little debate over the fact that over the past 25 years or so global temperatures have risen significantly, and the trend has escalated since 1990.'' Why? Well, he points out that many weather stations have been moved from cities to nearby airports, where acres of asphalt radiate more heat. Some weather stations, previously in the countryside, have been absorbed into urban areas, which are warmer in the winter. Still, deserts are expanding, glaciers are melting, and Burt is obliged to note that ''recent studies'' indicate that an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ''is inextricably associated with global temperature change.''
How hot can it get? The weather station near Furnace Creek, Calif., in Death Valley, located 282 feet below sea level, records an average daily high of 115 degrees and a low of 87 degrees during July, making it the hottest location in North America and ''perhaps the hottest place in the world.'' Oddly, I found myself rooting for Death Valley in the worldwide temperature sweepstakes. The valley hit 134 degrees on July 10, 1913. That's the warmest temperature ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere, and is exceeded only by a reading of 136 degrees recorded in Al Aziziyah, Libya, and a ''questionable'' reading of 135 degrees in Algeria.
By TIM CAHILL
Published: January 30, 2005
HE sky is falling, temperatures are more extreme, tornadoes ravage the land, Buffalo is probably buried in snow at this very moment, and it is flooding somewhere in the world. Hailstones the size of pumpkins -- yes, pumpkins -- may be pummeling Bangladesh right now. Your town's temperature may hit a record high today. Or maybe a record low. Or your temperatures may reach a record high and a record low in a single 24-hour period. It happens: not necessarily at the same time all over the world -- that's a disaster movie scenario -- but pretty much every year there is a spate of appallingly anomalous weather somewhere, convincing most of us that the weather is changing, and for the worse.
In 2004, Florida was pounded with a record four hurricanes in a single season, a disaster that cost 117 lives and destroyed 25,000 homes. In early January, five days of torrential rains in California triggered mudslides that killed at least 10 people. The same storm brought blizzard conditions to North Dakota, where the wind chill dropped to 50 below. And while it was more a geological event than a climatological one, a magnitude-9 earthquake off the north coast of Sumatra generated a tsunami that has, to date, killed some 150,000 people.
Christopher C. Burt, the author of the excellent and addictive ''Extreme Weather: A Guide & Record Book,'' strives to put all this in context. He reminds us that, eons ago, the earth experienced some mind-boggling temperatures: there were glaciers in Wisconsin, and palm trees littered northern Canada. That's climate, of course, not weather. Weather happens in the short term, and we humans haven't been keeping reliable records all that long. ''In the United States,'' Burt writes, ''weather records have been maintained by the official weather services since about 1870. In the 50 preceding years, records were kept intermittently by individuals and by some institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution.'' The figures we have ''represent only a fraction of human experience with weather,'' but may be used as a ''yardstick'' to determine climatic trends. By this yardstick, the weather is not becoming more extreme.
Burt, who was born in Manhattan in October 1954, during New York's most severe hurricane on record, was a protege of the weather historian David M. Ludlum and studied meteorology at the University of Wisconsin. The man is obsessed with violent weather in the pleasantly dotty, accuracy-infatuated manner of someone in the throes of elucidating a lifelong passion. And while extreme weather fascinates him, Burt himself seems to have no desire actually to experience it. He lives in Oakland, described as ''a city of unremitting weather dullness.'' (Earthquakes, apparently, have no dominion over his imagination.)
Burt spends but a single page on global warming. ''There is little debate over the fact that over the past 25 years or so global temperatures have risen significantly, and the trend has escalated since 1990.'' Why? Well, he points out that many weather stations have been moved from cities to nearby airports, where acres of asphalt radiate more heat. Some weather stations, previously in the countryside, have been absorbed into urban areas, which are warmer in the winter. Still, deserts are expanding, glaciers are melting, and Burt is obliged to note that ''recent studies'' indicate that an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ''is inextricably associated with global temperature change.''
How hot can it get? The weather station near Furnace Creek, Calif., in Death Valley, located 282 feet below sea level, records an average daily high of 115 degrees and a low of 87 degrees during July, making it the hottest location in North America and ''perhaps the hottest place in the world.'' Oddly, I found myself rooting for Death Valley in the worldwide temperature sweepstakes. The valley hit 134 degrees on July 10, 1913. That's the warmest temperature ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere, and is exceeded only by a reading of 136 degrees recorded in Al Aziziyah, Libya, and a ''questionable'' reading of 135 degrees in Algeria.
