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Extreme Weather

Houston, Tx - Memorial Day flooding, 2015

Climate Change and Deadly Floods: What you need to know

With all of the extreme rain and snow storms across the US lately, the obvious question arises… are these events linked to climate change? New research shows us the answer is a resounding ‘yes’.   And it actually makes perfect sense.  Carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere, and a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture. When you combine warmer, moist air with disruption of the Jet Stream cased by a warming Arctic, you get huge, slow-moving weather fronts packed with moisture.  This is the exact recipe for epic, extreme storms. As an example, on Memorial Day in 2015, a massive storm parked over southern Texas and dropped nearly 11 inches of… Read More »Climate Change and Deadly Floods: What you need to know

Oklahoma farmer's son, Dust Bowl era, 1930s

Climate change, drought and the future of America

Climate change will likely lead to drought in the Southwest that make the historic Dust Bowl of the 1930’s look like good times.  A bunch of scientific studies assessing the risk of drought were recently covered in various media outlets, including Forbes, National Geographic, Scientific American and elsewhere. Several of these media reports are based on an excellent paper, published in Science Advances, called “Unprecedented 21st century drought risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains.”  Their findings were not encouraging. In this paper, scientists from NASA, Columbia and Cornell Universities used historical tree ring data and something called the Palmer Drought Severity Index… Read More »Climate change, drought and the future of America