extreme weather

Last year was officially the hottest ever recorded for the lower-48 states. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tallied weather and temperature data for 2012, and found that the year was both the warmest and the second-most extreme for weather ever recorded for the contiguous U.S.[read more]

Business Risk via Shutterstock

Businesses have always had to predict and manage risks. Those risks include the potential impact of extreme weather such as floods, storms and drought on a company's supply chain, power supply, and property.But now companies must find a way to factor in the "instability ingredient" -- climate change -- which is likely to make weather...[read more]

Credit: FEMAThe election is over—now what on the climate change issue? Hurricane Sandy, the nation’s fiscal situation, and the election results have combined to create three key things that I think compel Congress to action on climate change.1. Climate Change Impacts are Costing the Federal Government Too Much...[read more]

In the inevitable discussion about the relationship between climate change and Hurricane Sandy, there's been much focus on the storm surge. Hallelujah. There are a lot of ways climate change could influence tropical cyclones. In the past, most of the public discussion had focused on warmer water temperatures driving more intense storms...[read more]

Millions of Americans woke up Tuesday morning to a changed world. Hurricane Sandy had flooded our streets, ripped down our power lines, and tossed trees into ours homes. Cars, boats, and debris carried by surging waters lay scattered along the roads. Towns and cities had been pummeled, and the storm wasn’t even finished yet. New Jersey...[read more]

Satellite image of Superstorm Sandy taken at 10 am EDT Tuesday. Image NASA GSFC via Masters.Climate science explains how global warming can make a superstorms like Sandy more destructive in several ways:Warming-driven sea level rise makes storm surges more destructive. In fact, a recent study found “The sea level on a stretch of the US...[read more]

This morning residents of New Jersey woke up and discovered that Hurricane Sandy had turned the garden state into a Michael Bay film. Damages to property, infrastructure and the economy will likely be as great or greater than any other disaster the east coast has seen. Exceptionally powerful computers model weather like this.[read more]

As Hurricane Sandy moves out of the region, people in affected areas are beginning to take stock of the damage. Flooding in parts of New Jersey and New York from the storm surge hit record levels. The 13.8-foot surge measured at Battery Park in Lower Manhattan surpassed the all-time record of 11.2 feet set in 1821, flooding the New York...[read more]

This year’s extreme weather events—a warm winter, even warmer summer, and a drought that covered nearly two-thirds of the continental United States—has certainly caused its fair share of damages. But despite the crop failures, water shortages, and heat waves, extreme weather created at least one benefit: smaller dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico.[read more]

The latest weekly Drought Monitor update set another grim record. The brutal U.S. drought expanded to 65.45% of the contiguous U.S. — the highest ever in the Monitor’s 12-year history. The previous record was 64.8% — set just last week.In the third quarter alone, crop production dropped $12 billion “due to this summer’s...[read more]

Extreme Weather via Shutterstock

A report released this week by two senior members of Congress notes that the unusual number of extreme weather events in 2012 has cost the country billions of dollars and that the unusual frequency of these events is consistent with what scientists have predicted from climate change.The staff report, “Going to Extremes: Climate Change...[read more]

Like a baseball player on steroids, our climate system is breaking records at an unnatural pace. And like a baseball player on steroids, it’s the wrong question to ask whether a given home run is “caused” by steroids. It is very likely that several of the unprecedented extremes of the past decade would not have occurred without anthropogenic global warming.[read more]

Thermometer via Shutterstock

The summer of 2012 has come to a close, but it won’t be forgotten anytime soon. It delivered one extreme weather event after another, from heat waves to freak storms, wildfires to drought. People lost their homes and livelihoods, yet even as they try to pick up the pieces, more powerful weather systems are looming on the horizon.Extreme...[read more]

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that last month was, on average, the hottest July on record for the contiguous United States, beating the previous record set in the dust bowl of 1936. The past 12 months have been the hottest ever recorded in the US, with more than 27,000 heat records broken so far this...[read more]

ChameleonsEye/Shutterstock

Today we’re updating our online map providing an overview of extreme weather events in the United States since 1990.  The map highlights memorable examples of extreme heat, heavy precipitation, drought, and wildfire, four types of events with clear trends connected to climate change.The widespread distribution of these events...[read more]