Climatologists Forecast Completely New Climates

Hope you're enjoying summer, eh! It's going to be 31 C here tomorrow... 32 C Monday. Yippee! We love the heat. Fill your mug with some icEpresso and force down a virtual cool cream slice, why don't'cha? Global warming seems to be here to stay but we still have to do something about winters here in Canada. I'm not a skier and I could care less. But shovelling snow is not fun. It should be illegal! Anyway, more on global warming, eh...

The tropics and much of the Northern Hemisphere are likely to experience an irreversible rise in summer temperatures within the next 20 to 60 years if atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase, according to a climate study by Stanford University scientists.


In the study, the Stanford team concluded that many tropical regions in Africa, Asia and South America could see "the permanent emergence of unprecedented summer heat" in the next two decades. Middle latitudes of Europe, China and North America are likely to undergo extreme summer temperature shifts within 60 years, the researchers found.

"According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years," said the study's lead author, Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science and fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford.
  
According to both the climate model analysis and the historical weather data, the tropics are heating up the fastest. "We find that the most immediate increase in extreme seasonal heat occurs in the tropics, with up to 70 percent of seasons in the early 21st century exceeding the late-20th century maximum," the authors wrote.

Tropical regions may see the most dramatic changes first, but wide swaths of North America, China and Mediterranean Europe are also likely to enter into a new heat regime by 2070, according to the study.

Environmental impact
This dramatic shift in seasonal temperatures could have severe consequences for human health, agricultural production and ecosystem productivity, Diffenbaugh said. As an example, he pointed to record heat waves in Europe in 2003 that killed 40,000 people. He also cited studies showing that projected increases in summer temperatures in the Midwestern United States and Canada could reduce the harvest of staples, such as corn and soybeans, by more than 30 percent.

Diffenbaugh was surprised to see how quickly the new, potentially destructive heat regimes are likely to emerge, given that the study was based on a relatively moderate forecast of greenhouse gas emissions in the 21st century.

"The fact that we're already seeing these changes in historical weather observations, and that they match climate model simulations so closely, increases our confidence that our projections of permanent escalations in seasonal temperatures within the next few decades are well founded," Diffenbaugh said.

Don't put me down for a tropical condo on Baffin Island just yet, eh. A couple of palm trees on my front lawn here will do nicely!

See ya, eh!

Bob