Yesterday, it rained. In Winnipeg. In the middle of the Canadian Prairies. In January. That’s more than just weird – it’s down right unnatural.
Unfortunately, climate change will be causing more and more weird and unnatural weather. A better word for climate change or global warming is “Global Climate Destabilization”.
That would explain rain on the prairies in January.
Check out Can Climate Change Explain the Odd Weather?, a 2007 interview with Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, on NPR. Trenberth states:
…of course one of the things which definitely alters things and makes you suspect that there’s just no good analog, which is what you’re really talking about here, is global warming. You know, and this has really kicked in in the last 25 to 30 years. It’s rearing its head more and more, and it just means that conditions nowadays can never be quite like what they used to be in the past. The oceans are warming up. The oceans have warmed up about a degree Fahrenheit as a whole. There’s more water vapor over the oceans. That invigorates storms. It changes the character of hurricanes, makes them more intense typically, these heavier rainfall events that we’re experiencing across North America.
And so the – you know, this is not – this is not your grandfather’s weather anymore.
For more discussion on this topic, check out the CBC science show Quirks and Quarks discussion on the difference between climate and weather.