Climate Change and the Heavy Snow

When just before the Copenhagen climate change conference began there was a media row regarding hacked emails from the University of East Anglia, my initial concern was actually it did sound as though data had been manipulated. However, as I have dug into this further, I could see that there was no altering of the data to get results that only supported climate change.

I was also concerned that mail and correspondence that I had had with this institution was part of what had been hacked. As I had given contact details for various people that I have garnered together over the years myself. I am careful about my data and I am especially careful of others details as often these people have trusted me not to share stuff like email addresses and telephone numbers. Fortunately in all the cases that I had shared details, I had express permission to do this. However I am annoyed that the “theft” had caused me worries and potentially jeopardised friendships and contact that have taken years to build up. Fortunately too none of my mails were published, probably as they were far to boring to be of interest.

While there were aspects of the internal emails that were revealing of the backstabbing within academia, for the most part the stolen data revealed nothing about climate change. It did however muddy the waters and create doubts about the validity of the science. But one aspect the situation did reveal is the one billion dollars US that the coal and oil industry spends each year, collectively, to cast doubt upon climate change. Now these are the same people that accuse us rational and reasonable folks of... Well it changes but often of trying to destroy the economy and western civilisation. Personally you only need to look at the oil companies, the mining companies and the bankers to see that they are already doing a bloody good job already.

There can be no argument that climate change is happening, where there is room for a rational debate is exactly when the harms as a result of our changing climate will happen. I have made no secret that I genuinely think that we are likely to see a rapacious and dramatic rise in sea levels in a few years, by the end of the decade at the latest. This has nothing to do with the so called end of the world in 2012, but is based upon the science. However, I know that there are plenty of people who don't believe that any of the worse effects will happen for decades.

The effect of this controversial was to get me to rethink and re-examine the science. I have always had an open mind regarding Man made Climate Change, and if the science showed that there was another credible reason why we are seeing the climatic and weather events that are effecting the planet, then I have always been willing to say that I was wrong. However imperfect the theory that human activity is causing climate change is, the scientific data is conclusive. While there may be some small effects from other factors that influence the climate, it is the impact of billions of tons of CO2 going into the atmosphere from ancient carbon that is resulting in the global temperature change.

Where there is room for disagreement is the timing of the effects of the changes to global climate and localised weather patterns.

Over the last decade there has not been the increase in the global average temperature that was expected. This is something that the so called sceptics point to to say that Climate change is not happening. However, it has increased in bands, just as the weather systems circle the globe. That is why in the Arctic average temperatures have risen by ten degrees or more. The same is happening in the Antarctic too.

A major part of this lack of temperature increase can be explained by the effects of clouds. We all know that clouds can help trap the heat in. But equally clouds can reflect the sunlight and solar radiation back out into space. Thus clouds can have a warming and cooling effect. Therefore the question was was there more water vapour in the atmosphere?

Normally about one thousandth of all the water on the planet is in the atmosphere. While that may not sound like a lot, you only have to think of the volume of water that are in all the oceans and seas and you realise just how much that represents. I then discover that measurements show that global climate change has increased this volume of water vapour by four percent. Therefore the heavy snow events that have hit America, in particular, are a direct result of climate change.

While it is true that it is normally impossible to say that any weather event is the result of our changing global climate, the evidence is actually here that this was as a direct result of climate change. The extra snow only happened because of the extra moisture in the atmosphere. In many ways we should all be grateful that it fell as snow and not as rain as the flooding and damage that would have caused if it had been rain would have been devastating.

While I am willing to accept that there can and will be disagreements over the timing of when events will occur as a result of Climate Change, the fact of Human induced climate change is here and real.