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More severe weather events are in our future
By JACK DOWNS
Design Editor
With winter reluctantly giving way to spring, I've been thinking about what our winters, and overall weather, will be like in the North Country over the next 10 and 20 years as global warming gradually but inexorably takes hold.
In some ways, we live a charmed weather life in our corner of the Northeast: tornadoes are very rare and seldom fatal; hurricanes peter out long before they get here; mud slides are almost unknown; avalanches are rare, remote and small; floods are isolated and usually well predicted. Sure, we have snow and cold, but we're ready for it.
But that charm may be wearing off.
Most experts agree that global warming has the potential to increase the number of severe weather events in our region.
Listen to what Joan Klaassen has to say on the topic. Klaassen, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, studies the climate future of southern Ontario and Quebec, which means she's talking about our future, too.
"What the climate-change scientists are telling us is that an extreme event that we see now, whether it is an ice storm, a heat wave or an extreme flooding event, could become twice as likely in the future climate and looking into the future, into 2050," Klaassen said last year on the award-winning CBC Radio science show "Quirks & Quarks."
Klaassen and 10 other scientists were interviewed as part of an eye-opening episode "Canada in 2050 - Our Future in a Changing Climate."
For more visit: http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/07-08/nov24.html
I'm not predicting a summer of twisters and a winter of ice storms. But both those dangerous events will become more likely in the North Country over coming decades as more and more heat energy is added to the atmosphere.
So as winter melts away and memories of the Ice Storm of 1998 fade, I suggest you think about your emergency supplies of bottled water, canned food, candles and batteries.
The weather is changing.
