Dr. Jennifer Francis on extreme weather

Dr. Jennifer Francis, Top Climatologists Explain How Global Warming Wrecks the Jet Stream and Amps Up Hydrological Cycle To Cause Dangerous Weather

A new program, posted above and produced by Australian Broadcasting, provides in depth analysis of the cutting edge climate science that begins to reveal how human-caused climate change is causing increasingly dangerous weather.

The program explores past extreme events like the European and Russian heatwaves that together resulted in nearly 100,000 deaths, the devastating floods of Pakistan, and this year’s extreme Northern Hemisphere winter and shows how climate change was the driving factor in each. The program also explores issues I’ve been covering here — like how melting sea ice causes the Jet Stream to meander, resulting in more persistent weather patterns that drive extreme events. The chief pioneer in this research, Dr. Jennifer Francis, provides some well rendered and somewhat chilling explanations about this key feature of our new atmosphere.

Another aspect explored is how global warming greatly increases the hydrological cycle. New findings have shown that just 1 degree Celsius of global temperature rise increases the intensity of the global hydrological cycle by a whopping 7%. Evaporation increases by 7%, fueling more droughts and heatwaves, and rates of rainfall during storms also increases by 7%, further increasing the damage caused by the most extreme storms. Predicted rises in temperatures of 2, 4, 6 or more degrees Celsius would result in a catastrophic amplification of the hydrological cycle by 15, 30, 40 percent or greater. This basic underpinning of storm and drought formation shows how devastating to human systems such a massive change in major weather drivers would be.

Lastly, the program explores how even a .8 degree Celsius rise in temperatures has resulted in more deadly heatwaves. The great European, Russian, US and Australia heatwaves of the past decade are all explored in this particular expose.

Please watch to entire video. It is well worth your time.