Climate change has been the major issue today and now scientists say that they have identified a physical mechanism behind the extreme weather that has plagued many parts of the world in recent years.
A new study by scientists from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) out Monday in the US proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences have subjected the event which saw the US and Russia each suffering from scorching heat waves and Pakistan with unprecedented flooding as being related to the events of disturbances in the air current in the northern hemisphere.
Lead author, Vladimir Petoukhov stated that during extreme weather events, forms of waves that wandered around the planet freezes and stay in their track and therefore, instead of bringing in cool air they release warm air as the heat just stays in the region.
These extreme events create a lot of stress in an ecosystem and resulted in high death tolls, forest fines and agricultural losses.
In 2010, Russia recorded its worst effect of heat ways with wild fines spreading out of control, lalling dozens of people, burning down thousands of houses and threatening military and nuclear installations.
Scientists explained that the effect of Global Warming is not uniform across the planet.
They elucidated a scenario pointing out the difference between bumping temperatures in the poles and the swathes in between. As a result, scientists added that the temperature differences between the Arctic and the middle latitudes are reduced. This action affects the flow of air around the globe and in return, continents cool more rapidly than large bodies of water.
Petoukhov revealed that these factors resulted in an unnatural pattern of mid-latitude air flow that for extended periods traps the slow synoptic waves. Hans Joachin Schellnhuber, a fellow author and PIK director cautioned that the time frame of the study was too short to reveal ultimate conclusions. He added and suggested that the physical process increase the probability of weather extremes and those additional factors play a role as well including natural variability.
Nevertheless, he called the new research; quite a breakthrough,”that helps explain the relationship between the spate of weather extremes and climate change.
February 26th 2014
AFP
Courtesy of Fijilive.com
