Study: Humans to Blame for Changes in Rain
Reuters
Monday 23 July 2007

First time "human fingerprint" on precipitation detected

Washington - Human activities that spur global warming are largely to blame for changes in rainfall patterns over the last century, climate researchers reported Monday.

The report was released as record rains caused severe flooding in Britain, China and Indonesia.

Human-caused climate change has been responsible for higher air temperatures and hotter seas and is widely expected to lead to more droughts, wildfires and floods, but the authors say this is the first study to specifically link it to precipitation changes.

"For the first time, climate scientists have clearly detected the human fingerprint on changing global precipitation patterns over the past century," researchers from Environment Canada, that country's environmental agency, said in a statement.

The scientists, writing in the journal Nature, found humans contributed significantly to these changes, which include more rain and snow in Northern regions that include Canada, Russia and Europe, drier conditions in the Northern tropics and more rainfall in the southern tropics.

Manmade climate change has had a "detectable influence" on changes in average precipitation in these areas, and it cannot be explained by normal climate variations, they wrote.

Weather experts in Britain raised the possibility that the current rains there may be related to climate change.

"The global climate models indicate a future for the UK with drier summers and wetter winters, but storm events in the summer are predicted to be more frequent and more intense," David Butler of the University of Exeter said in a statement. "So it may well be the case that we will have to learn to live with more flooding.

Nick Reeves, executive director of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management in Britain, said that "extreme events such as we have seen in recent weeks herald the specter of climate change and it would be irresponsible to imagine that they won't become more frequent."

Numerous studies and reports by a panel of scientists convened by the United Nations have reported with increasing certainty that human activities - notably the burning of fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases - have contributed to global warming in the last half-century and that the effects of this are already evident.

The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated temperatures would rise 3.2 to 7.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100, leading to more hunger, water shortages and extinctions.

Source

put on your helmet.... incoming!!!!

Since you live in Greece, you should read this: http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum...howtopic=100910

Yes, I notice the heat

I suspect he's been misquoted Models predict less summer rainfall and less frequent intense rainfall events in summer.

I live in England and am one of the lucky ones that haven't been flooded out. However, when I awake in the morning, I don't think "I wonder if it will rain today", I NOW think "I wonder what TIME it will rain today". I have never known such a wet, miserable summer in all my life.

Last year, we had a water shortage, hosepipe bans etc etc, watering my garden with watering cans took ages. This year I have had to water my garden just three times since March and that is only because I fed the plants.

Something peculiar is going on, Greece has extremely high temperatures, another country had snow recently that doesn't normally not to speak of weird tornados appearing in Britain

Speaking of tornadoes, we have the too nowadays. Until a few years ago they were a rarity. Now very common.

The thought of tornadoes bloody scare me lol. I didn't know Greece were having them too!

I, too, am lucky not to have been flooded out....I feel so sorry for those who have.

And those poor people in Gloucester, Cheltenham and Tewkesury...there's water everywhere
but they have to rely on emergency supplies of clean drinking water.

And now (front pages of papers today) they are saying that because sewage got into the flood
waters...that there are some nasty bacteria like e.coli and salmonella all over the place, and will
be present in the sludge for weeks, or months after the floods recede.


Regarding the man-made or not man-made question....this is a passionate debate....that has not
been settled.....one way or the other.

You mean you don't get suspicious when the same agencies that claim that to increases the temperature on Mars it's atmosphere needs more CO₂ claim that putting it into the Earths atmosphere has no bearing on it's climate?

ED:TYPO

Someone more knowledgeable than me will add or correct me, but the usual summer set-up is the Azores high lieing over southern britain, but affecting northern parts. Basically this means south is warm and dry and north is warm, but still pretty wet.

Weather systems that currently lie over britain would thus head over Iceland, and maybe catch Scotland.

This year the Azores high has headed east rather than north. This has allowed the wet weather to migrate south, but prevented weather systems entering south/ south-east Europe...

The result is SE Europe heat up badly whilst Britain gets the rain.

Has it been linked to la Nina or just suggested without research?

It has been quoted as a hypothesis. No definite prove until December.