As I read my Global Environment class notes over and over ... and over again, in preparation for my midterm tomorrow, I figure a good way to procrastinate a little but feel like I'm not is to do a post about something interesting and thought provoking that I have to study.
So, everyone has heard about global warming, obviously, and yet, if you live somewhere cold, or already hot, you might not be seeing the effects of global warming. This is because, while globally there is, and will be, warming, at the local level it varies a lot.
One thing that helps explain the local variations is this thing called teleconnections. Teleconnections are natural modes of variability, and essentially they are certain correlations in pressure between two separate areas on the globe. So for example, if one area has low pressue the other area will have higher pressure, and these patterns last for a certain number of years and then it switches (the low pressure area turns high pressure and vice versa).
So, everyone has heard about global warming, obviously, and yet, if you live somewhere cold, or already hot, you might not be seeing the effects of global warming. This is because, while globally there is, and will be, warming, at the local level it varies a lot.
One thing that helps explain the local variations is this thing called teleconnections. Teleconnections are natural modes of variability, and essentially they are certain correlations in pressure between two separate areas on the globe. So for example, if one area has low pressue the other area will have higher pressure, and these patterns last for a certain number of years and then it switches (the low pressure area turns high pressure and vice versa).
The specific teleconnection I want to talk about is called the North Atlantic Oscillation. What this is, is that when the north Atlantic ocean is cold and stormy, then the central Atlantic ocean will be warm and dry. And then after a certain number of years (about 20-30), this pattern will reverse.
Here is a picture that demonstrates this:
Here is a picture that demonstrates this:
Why this is an important thing to understand is because recently, this pattern has switched, the North Atlantic is now warmer and wetter and the central Atlantic has become colder. More specifically, places like Washington DC, Boston, London and Paris - places where key decisions are made - are now going to get colder winters, and so while leaders know global warming is happening, when they experience colder winters at a local level, they don't see what you'd expect to see - warmth - and so they become sceptical. Combined with the length of this pattern, they will come to believe that global warming isn't happening if they simply look at their local environment, and so the decisions they make, which can have gloabl impacts, will take global warming less and less into account.
This is a dangerous habit to start, and so people need to be aware that there is a difference between natural climate trends and human-made trends, once you separate the difference between these two, then you can truly see the impacts of human activity on the climate, locally and globally.
This is a dangerous habit to start, and so people need to be aware that there is a difference between natural climate trends and human-made trends, once you separate the difference between these two, then you can truly see the impacts of human activity on the climate, locally and globally.
