Posted by
Average Voter on Friday, August 01, 2008 3:08:33 PM
It may sound contradictory, but the U.S. is experiencing more droughts and more flooding due to global warming - helping drive an increase in demand for scientists who understand water in the atmosphere and what happens to it on the ground.
We all know of course that droughts and flooding have never happened until we discovered climate change.
Heim pointed to Texas, which has experienced severe drought in the past few months but saw severe flooding in July because of localized thunderstorms and the remnants of Hurricane Dolly. "So you're having major drought and then major flooding in the same month in the same place," Heim said.
That has never happened either I suppose? It's a symptom of global warming that Texas was in a drought and then a thunderstorm came, and then a hurricane came...and then it rained alot? When a hurricane makes landfall on already soaked soil, guess what...it floods!
The frustrating part of all of this is that everything these days needs an explanation. Hurricans, droughts, and thunderstorms have been apart of this landscape called Earth since before humans were here to influence it These days it's more like they are looking for something to blame bad weather on (or push an agenda). But more than likely global warming is the new 'buzz-word' to get funding for their pet scientific projects.
Xubin Zeng, a UA professor of atmospheric sciences who co-wrote the proposal with Gupta, said the hope is for the new program to be funded by the federal government, the private sector and international organizations that stand to benefit from better predicting of weather extremes.
I think they should devise a program that better predicts the weather for the day after tommorow.