This year's unusual weather has had many people wondering, is global warming contributing to the wild weather? Well the truth is the year has been very strange in correlation with the last several years. "In Brooklyn, residents were surprised by what seemed to be a tornado in September. That came on the heels of a 2007 tornado in the borough—the first in more than a century. Last winter, much of the northern hemisphere experienced record cold temperatures and heavy snowfalls, while the southern hemisphere had record heat. Seoul had its heaviest snowfall in recorded history; Australia, Pakistan, and Brazil experienced torrential rainfall that caused massive flooding; in Florida, the unusual winter freezes threatened citrus crops, and the summer of 2010 was a scorcher for much of the U.S." (MSNBC). However, are all the changes and record numbers due to global warming? Many people seem to be under the assumption that global warming has to do with increases in temperature, but that's not always the case. In some cricumstances, rising sea levels attribute to changes in wind and rainfall patterns. In order to properly determine the effects of global warming on weather, scientists choose to focus on large scale, long term weather patterns instead of one big storm, or one big rainfall. Afterall, an unusually large storm could be attributed to the collision of two large storm fronts.
However, people may not be entirely wrong in their assumptions. Recent research has definitely shown a slight alteration of these weather patterns. "Eleven of the past 30 summers were either abnormally wet or abnormally dry in the Southeastern states" (MSNBC)." Scientists will continue to study the various theories and assumptions, to determine just how much of an effect global warming has on our wild weather.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/09/the-truth-behind-wild-weather-and-global-warming.html
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