The onslaught of wild weather that has battered the USA in recent years — from Hurricane Sandy and deadly tornado outbreaks to extremes of drought and floods -- looks to be part of a "new normal" for weather patterns in the U.S., new National Weather Service Director Louis Uccellini said Wednesday.
In comments to the USA TODAY Editorial Board, Uccellini also cited the "likely" contribution of global warming to the extreme weather.
Global warming is "making it more likely that the storms are more intense and produce heavier precipitation," he said, but Uccellini cautioned that he doesn't think there are enough cases of extreme weather yet to prove the hypothesis. "I think the evidence is leaning that way," he said, adding that we've loaded the dice to produce more extreme weather such as Sandy. Uccellini said that Sandy's damage was due in part to sea level rise from global warming.
The extreme weather, surprisingly, may even include winter storms, such as the ones that have hammered the Northeast Coast this winter.
"We have observed more snowstorms and heavy rain events that have been extreme," he said, due to the fact that a warming atmosphere can "hold more water vapor that can increase the intensity of storms."
One study, recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, reports that the lack of Arctic summer ice has altered weather patterns down here in North America and could potentially lead to stormier winters.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/03/20/weather-extremes-global-warming-climate-change-louis-uccellini/2003513/
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