Psyche, Science, and Society

Rain, rain, and global warming

June 30th, 2006

Reuters reports that Northeast floods stir global warming debate, as the record rains appear connected to rapid warming of the Atlantic ocean:

”Paul Epstein, associate director of Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, said the Atlantic is warming faster than scientists projected even a decade ago, and he expects such storms as the one seen this week from Virginia to New York to become common.

“Scientists and climatologists are looking at one another and we’re just stunned because no one, even in the 1990s, projected the magnitude of the storms and degree of warming in the Arctic that we are seeing,” he said.

Epstein sees a clear pattern: rain has increased in the United States by 7 percent in three decades; heavy rain events of more than 2 inches a day are up 14 percent and storms dumping more than 4 inches a day rose 20 percent.”

Some, however, believe natural cycles are to blame:

””The climate is warming,” said Bernie Rayno, senior meteorologist at Accuweather.com. “The real question is: ‘Are humans causing it or is it occurring because of natural cycles?’ We believe that we are in a natural cycle like we were back in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. And that was a time of big climate swings.””

If it is global warming, those of us in Boston have a hot future in store:

”At current projections, Epstein said, a typical day in Boston could feel like present-day Richmond, Virginia, in 100 years under one model of the atmosphere and oceans produced by the federally funded New England Regional Assessment of 2001.

Epstein, who contributed to that study, said another model that sees Boston resembling Atlanta, Georgia with a 10-degree Fahrenheit (5.6-degree C) rise in temperature over a century could be conservative.

“What we are seeing is really the pace and magnitude of these changes are much greater than we had imagined, so in fact the models each year become underestimates,” he said.”

Entry Filed under: Environment, Gobal Warming