Weird Winter Weather

IPCC Report: Weird Winter Weather May Be a Preview of Things to Come

 

Rare Dalmatian Pelicans that were drawn to their summer roosts in Europe’s Danube River delta months early by unseasonable warmth are now freezing their tail feathers off as cold weather returns to the area. Butterflies that normally winter along the Mediterranean coast have been spotted in the Austrian Alps, lingering to feed on already-blooming primrose and almond trees. Strange disruptions like these in the seasonal rhythms of wildlife may not be the direct result of global warming, but they could be a preview of things to come if the predictions of the latest international climate assessment, released Friday, prove correct.
The report, authored by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), states that there is more than a 90 percent chance that warming observed during the past 50 years is the result of human activity. It also issued a stern warning to world governments, predicting centuries of rising temperatures and sea levels unless policymakers take immediate action to curb the phenomenon. 
The report predicts a rise in world sea levels up to half a meter by the year 2100, and a rise in mean temperatures of 1.8 to 4.0 degrees Celsius over the next century, increasing the frequency and intensity of heat waves, droughts, tropical cyclones, and other severe weather events.
The IPCC warning punctuates a period of unseasonable warmth across much of the northern hemisphere that confounded more than birds and butterflies. Camels and big cats in the Moscow Zoo caught spring fever, and zookeepers there expect puma cubs two months early. Along the U.S. east coast, near-record temperatures brought flowers into bloom only weeks after the New Year. Upon seeing the explosion of daffodils in his suburban Washington garden, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that he felt like he’d wandered into an episode of The Twilight Zone.
As media and political attention to climate change rises, global awareness of the problem appears to be growing. A January survey of more than 25,000 Internet users revealed that 9 out of 10 people around the world are aware of global warming, though only 57 percent consider it to be a “very serious” problem.” Awareness is highest in Europe and Latin America and lowest in North America: in the United States, 13 percent of respondents had never even heard of global warming, despite the fact that the country is the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases.