In a recent article published by the Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA news source) we can read about how the melting of the poles will come to effect our country in the coming winters. The article entitled, "Extreme weather likely as ice loss accelerates" goes on to discuss that the ice is melting in the poles much faster than scientists expected,
"Record ice melts this year and in 2007 have alarmed many scientists, mostly because they thought it would take many more years to reach this state... “These are really surprises to most scientists,” Overland said. “In looking at climate models that are used to look forward, they’ve tended to say the Arctic may be ice-free by 2040 or 2050."
The article also discusses how this will affect our weather patterns here in the US. They suggest that it will exaggerate all of the weather that we experience. The melting of the poles reduces the amount of sunlight reflected back into space, meaning more is absorbed by the water. This then heats up the planet even further and will slow down our jet-stream quite a bit. This jet-stream slowing will cause weather to linger in one place for longer periods of time,
"If you’re in a nice dry pattern with sunny skies, it’s great if it lasts for a few days. But if it lasts for a few weeks, well then you’re starting to talk about a drought,” Francis said. “If you have a rainy pattern and it hangs around for a long time, then that becomes a situation that could lead to flooding... (The weather) gets stuck."
It definitely was an interesting article and raised a lot of questions for me. I was wondering why climatologists were so off in predicting the melting of the ice. Also, if it results in more summers like the one I experienced in Madison, with the drought it would be something that was truly invasive to the way we're used to living life.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2012/sep/14/extreme-weather-likely-as-ice-loss-accelerates/
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