Global Warming In The News

Jerry Salley has been farming corn, soybeans and milo in the Placedo-Bloomington area for 47 years, but never has he seen a summer like this one.

"Weather-wise, I've seen it all," he said. "But never a summer this wet, this long."

He said there have always been droughts and there have always been wet spells. And he said they will continue to plague farmers and ranchers.

"The biggest difference I've seen over the last eight or nine years, agriculturally speaking, is we have not had many what farmers would call normal years. It has been feast or famine," Salley said.

From wildfires in Italy to massive flooding in England to record rainfall in Victoria, the weather seems to have gone crazy across the globe this summer.

Could it be the result of recurring events like El Niño and La Niña, the Pacific Ocean currents that disrupt weather patterns around the world?

Or is it the effects of global warming, the planet-wide climate change that causes an increase in the average temperature?

But no El Niño or La Niña have been detected this year, so they can't be blamed for the recent calamities, said John Metz, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

function submitCommentsForm(){ document.getElementById("storyCommentForm").submit(); } There is no question that the culprit causing the flooding, heavy rainfall and other weather disasters is global warming, said Luke Metzger, director with Environment Texas, a statewide environmental advocacy group.

"It's all part of the trend we're seeing in the erratic weather," he said. "It's the things scientists are saying have already happened and are likely to happen."

While scientists can't link a single weather disaster to global warming, there are plenty of examples showing the trend, Metzger said.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center reported that the summer of 2006 and the entire year were the second warmest on record for the lower 48 states.

Across the globe this year is on track to become the second hottest year on record, Metzger also said.

The average temperature last summer for the mainland United States was 74.3 degrees, or 2.2 degrees above normal. That is just shy of the 1936 summer record of 74.7 degrees, said Jay Lawrimore, chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch for the climate center.

And it is not just the summers that are getting hotter.

The average temperature for all of last year was 54.9 degrees, which is 2.1 degrees above average. That is only marginally warmer than the 55-degree record set in 1998.

Global land surface temperatures for January and April will likely be ranked as the warmest since records began in 1880, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization reported this month. Global temperatures were 3.4 degrees warmer than average for January and 2.5 degrees warmer than average for April.

While not all of those increases can be linked to global warming, scientists agree it is part of the problem. The concern is the effect those rising temperatures will have, Lawrimore said.

"Observed data have shown us that, globally, the area covered by severe drought has increased since the 1970s," he said.

"We have evidence that heavy precipitation events are occurring with greater frequency as the atmosphere is able to hold more moisture because it's warming."

This can lead to flash flooding and rising sea levels, which in turn contributes to coastal erosion and salt-water intrusion, because globally the average water temperature has risen just under 1 degree, Lawrimore said.

"There's generally broad agreement the most intense hurricanes will occur with greater frequency," he said.

"There have been some observations to point to the fact that has already started to occur over the last 30 years."

Global warming isn't just affecting the United States, said Gerald North, distinguished professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University in College Station.

It's melting ice in the Arctic Ocean, it's melting permafrost in Alaska, and ice on top of high mountains in Africa is disappearing, he said.

"This is happening at a very rapid pace now," North said. "These are ice fields that have been there thousands of years."

Those effects have accelerated during the last 11 years, Metzger said.

"But what's scarier is what scientists predict for the coming decade," he said.

"We ain't seen nothing yet, from what the scientists say, if we don't take action to reduce (greenhouse) emissions immediately."

North agreed, saying that based on computer models, the average temperature will rise 4 to 6 degrees over the next century.

"It's not good," he said. "Where it's wet, it's going to be wetter. Where it's dry, it's going to be drier."

In Texas, everything west of Interstate 35, which runs from Laredo to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, will be even drier than it is now, North predicts. That includes the aquifer that feeds the springs providing the base flow for the Guadalupe River.

"So, if it doesn't rain there, the Guadalupe may not make it," North said. "I'm talking about 50 or 60 years from now."

Areas to the east of the interstate will be wetter, he said.

"Along the Gulf Coast - Victoria and Houston - it's not so clear the rain and evaporation will change all that much," he said. "But we don't know."

John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas state climatologist, said studies show temperatures are rising and people are responsible for at least part of the change.

"But as far as local impact, that's not nearly so clear," he said. "Temperatures in the state have gone up and down largely in response to natural climatic variability. They may just now be indicating more of a long-term trend, but it's just not possible to tell for sure."

Nielsen-Gammon said computer models take into account such factors as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, La Niña and El Niño to make predictions.

They can add and subtract those factors in different model runs to help determine the extent to which they influence the climate, he said.

"You absolutely can't blame temperature changes on just one thing," Nielsen-Gammon said.

"There are lots of factors. Some cause temperatures to go up and some cause them to go down."

While he won't tie the recent flooding and rainfall in Texas to global warming, he said the phenomenon can increase evaporation, which puts more moisture in the air and leads to more rainfall.

"Paradoxically, we expect to see more droughts and more floods as the precipitation becomes more variable and more intense," Nielsen-Gammon said.

David Tewes is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact him at 361-580-6515 or dtewes@vicad.com, or comment on this story at .