Re: Did Harvey have "More Moisture" than other storms?
Posted by
Chris in Tampa on 8/28/2017, 6:31 pm
You can't point to a single event and say that would not have happened had it not been for climate change. You have to look at changes over time. There would be storms like this even without climate change. Is this one now because of it though? No one can tell. That's a problem explaining to people.
Over years, maybe decades, you can see start seeing different changes in the climate. Whether it's warm or cold today, the weather, can't be attributable to climate change. But if over a decade your average temperatures for certain parts of the year are higher, then maybe something's up.
This is now at least the second 500-year flood event for some parts of the Houston area in less than 40 years. Even more 100-year flood events perhaps. I don't know how they calculate the chance of events like that, but if you are having them much more frequently, perhaps that's because the climate is in fact changing.
It's hard to determine things sometimes. In Tampa we haven't been below freezing since Jan. 13, 2010. A long time for us. But I wanted to research a little more about if that is a record. It's not:
http://www.weather.gov/media/tbw/climate/tpa32orless.pdf
We went 8 seasons without a freeze previously. It froze in January 1918 and didn't freeze again until January 1927. So maybe if we go 5 years more without a freeze, then we can tell we're warming up. It takes a long to demonstrate some things like that. We usually freeze more often, but 100 years ago we had a long stretch. I don't know where the thermometer was located, but I assume it's correct.
It's like the sea level rise. It's happening slow right now. Someone might say a rise is due to something else other than man made climate change. But over decades, it should become clearer. Of course then it gets harder to reverse course. |
54
In this thread:
Post A Reply
This thread has been archived and can no longer receive replies.