Most Americans Blame Global Warming for Extreme Weather

More than half of Americans think global warming is affecting weather in the United States, according to a new nationally representative survey that measures the pulse of American sentiment on climate change.

The newly released study shows that about two out of three Americans say weather in the country has worsened over the past several years, with only one in 10 saying the weather has been improving.

Americans also have strong views about the link between global warming and extreme weather.

Nearly 50 percent of the population believes global warming made the droughts that plagued the Midwestand the Great Plains last year more severe. Similarly, 46 percent of Americans believe climate change exacerbated the effects of Superstorm Sandy, which battered the Northeast in October 2012. [Dry & Dying: Stark Images of Drought]

"Americans are continuing to connect the dots between climate change and extreme weather in the United States," said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. "They're associating climate change with some of the major events that we experienced last year, like the ongoing drought."

Half of Americans also believe global warming was to blame for last year's record-breaking temperatures. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration named 2012 the warmest year on record, with every contiguous U.S. state registering above-average annual temperatures for the year.

Furthermore, 85 percent of Americans said they personally experienced one or more types of extreme weather in the past year, ranging from extreme heat (51 percent) to extreme high winds (60 percent).  

The number of Americans who were significantly harmed by extreme weather events in the past year increased to about 37 percent — up 4 to 5 percentage points since 2012, Leiserowitz told LiveScience.

"That's quite a significant number," he said. "It shows just how dramatic these extreme weather events have been."

And concern about the potential impacts of extreme weather does not appear to be dissipating. More than half of Americans (54 percent) believe extreme weather is "very" or "somewhat likely" to cause a natural disaster in their local area in the coming year.

The new report, titled "Extreme Weather and Climate Change in the American Mind," is based on a nationally representative survey jointly conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication in New Haven, Conn., and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication in Fairfax, Va.

For the study, 1,045 participants over age 18 were interviewed between April 8 and April 15. The researchers report a 95 percent confidence level, with a total average margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. This means that if the survey were conducted 100 times, the results would fall within 3 percentage points above or below the data collected in 95 of the 100 surveys.

The study was funded by the Surdna Foundation, the 11th Hour Project, the Grantham Foundation and the V.K. Rasmussen Foundation.

Follow Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

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Space trio lands in Kazakhstan after bad weather delay

ALMATY (Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz capsule made a "bull's eye" landing in the steppes of Kazakhstan on Saturday, delivering a Russian-American trio from the International Space Station, a day after its originally scheduled touchdown was delayed by foul weather.

NASA's Kevin Ford and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, who had manned the $100 billion orbital outpost since October as Expedition 34, landed in cloudy weather at 7:06 a.m. Moscow time (0306 GMT) northeast of the town of Arkalyk.

They had spent 144 days aboard the multinational ISS on their space journey of almost 61 million miles (98 million km).

"The landing was energetic and exciting," Russian TV showed Novitskiy as saying.

NASA television said the deorbit burn and other events during the descent had gone flawlessly. It said the capsule had landed upright, almost hitting its bull's eye target in thick fog.

"Oleg Novitskiy reported to search and recovery teams that the crew is feeling good," NASA television said. "Everything seems to be in order."

Due to hampered visibility, it took a few minutes before helicopters with Russian search and recovery teams could locate the Soyuz capsule after its landing.

The first images shown by Russia's Vesti-24 television featured rescue workers standing in a snow-covered steppe opening the hatch of the capsule.

The three smiling astronauts were seated on semi-reclined chairs and covered with blue thermal blankets. They were then carried to a nearby inflatable medical tent.

On Friday, fog and freezing rain at the landing site in Kazakhstan prevented helicopters from setting up for the crew's return to Earth.

In preparation for their departure, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield took the helm of the space station on Wednesday, becoming the first Canadian to take command of the outpost.

It is only the second time in the 12-year history of the station, a project of 15 nations that has been permanently staffed since November 2000, that command has been turned over to someone who is not American or Russian.

Hadfield will be part of a three-man skeleton crew until NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin arrive later this month.

(Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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2012: A Memorable Year for Weather

Drought, wildfire, hurricanes, a deadly typhoon and cold snap — this year had a lot to offer in terms of weather news.

Weather historian Christopher C. Burt, who blogs for the meteorological website Weather Underground, has been keeping tabs on events this year, and the headliner is clear, he said: Unusually warm temperatures, most notably across the continental United States.  

We take a look back at the most significant weather of 2012:

Record-breaking warmth: The data for the last of the year isn't in yet, but this year looks "virtually certain" take the title of warmest year on record for the lower 48 states, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Burt follows temperature observations for 300 evenly disbursed U.S. cities or sites with records going back into the 19th century. Of these, 22 reached their all-time highs this year, most during the heat wave that hit much of the country in late June and early July. Only the Pacific Northwest did not share in this year's exceptional warmth, Burt said. 

It was also a warm year for the planet, though not to quite the same degree. As of November, 2012 ranked as the eighth warmest for global average temperature, NOAA reported on Thursday (Dec. 20).

Burt also tracks temperatures for countries, and he noted all-time high records in July and August for five countries, three in Europe, one in Asia and one in Africa.

Summer in March: One notable heat wave this year hit the Great Lakes, Midwest, northern New England, New Brunswick and Novia Scotia in March, bringing scores of record-breaking temperatures for this time of year. In "The Nation's Icebox," International Falls, Mich., the low temperature during this heat wave — which bottomed out at 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15.6 degrees Celsius) on March 20 — tied the previous high for that date, according to the Weather Underground. 

Hottest month on record in the U.S.: Until this year, July 1936, during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, held the record for hottest month on record in the lower 48 states going back to 1895, but this July's heat surpassed even that record, surprising Burt, who told LiveScience in July, "1936 is probably unassailable frankly."

Drought: The unusually warm weather contributed to drought across much of the country this year, in some places, such as Texas, for the second consecutive year. While devastating, particularly to agriculture, this year's drought has not been unprecedented. It is the most extensive since the 1930s, affecting over half of the country for a majority of the year, NOAA reported on Dec. 20. [Dried Up: Photos Reveal Devastating Texas Drought]

A fiery year: In turn, drought and heat this year contributed to the third worst wildfire season for the western United States, where more than 9 million acres (3.6 million hectares) burned. Colorado and Oregon saw some of the worst fires.

Big storms: Hurricane Isaac made landfall at the end of August in southeastern Louisiana, seven years after Hurricane Katrina's arrival, which flooded New Orleans. This time, however, the city, with its fortified protection system, was spared the devastation. Later in the year, Superstorm Sandy, a hybrid hurricane and winter storm, pummeled the East Coast, bringing an unprecedented storm tide to The Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan. A sustained cluster of violent thunderstorms, called a derecho event, over central, eastern and northeastern states also made NOAA's list of billion-dollar-plus disasters; 28 people died as a result of these storms in late June and early July.

Biggest killers: The deadliest weather event of the year goes to Typhoon Bopha, which struck the Philippines in early December. The death toll has surpassed 1,000, with hundreds more missing, including fishermen who were out to sea when the typhoon — a tropical cyclone in the western Pacific or Indian Oceans — struck, according to media reports. But by comparison, the deadliest recorded tropical cyclone hit Bangladesh in November 1970, killing half-a-million people, Burt said. The cold wave that hit central and eastern Europe early in the year ranked as the second deadliest event of 2012, killing 824 people, Burt said.

Cold, but not unprecedented: In spite of its severity, this cold wave failed to set records. In fact, Burt said he is not aware of any significant cold records that were set during 2012. However, the coldest temperature for the year worldwide was recorded on Sept. 16 at Vostok, Antarctica, at minus 119.6 degrees F (minus 84.2 degrees C), according to Burt.

A slow year for tornados: After the devastation caused by tornados in 2011, this year has been relatively quiet. In fact, 2012 is on track to have the lowest tornado death count in a couple of decades, Burt said.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter@livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Weather forecast delays shuttle's arrival to NYC

NEW YORK (AP) — The space shuttle Enterprise's scheduled arrival in New York City has been pushed back because of possible bad weather.

NASA says Monday's planned arrival of the shuttle has been postponed "until further notice."

The Enterprise is being brought to the city where it has a new permanent home waiting at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.

NASA managers are monitoring weather forecasts and will reschedule the shuttle's flight as soon as possible.

The plan is to fly the shuttle atop a carrier aircraft to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. It will be moved by barge to the Intrepid museum for public display.

The museum is at a decommissioned aircraft carrier moored off Manhattan. It's been making room for the shuttle on its flight deck.

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U.N. to upgrade "space weather" forecasts

This undated photo shows the sun's coronal holes in an x-ray image. A U.N. plan to upgrade ''space weather'' forecasts can help the world cope with solar storms that might wreak up to $2 trillion in damage if the sun repeated a giant flare of 1859, experts said. The sun is entering a more active phase due to peak in 2013 on a roughly 11-year sunspot cycle, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.

Credit: Reuters/Ho New

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO | Wed Jun 8, 2011 12:52pm EDT

OSLO (Reuters) - A U.N. plan to upgrade "space weather" forecasts can help the world cope with solar storms that might wreak up to $2 trillion in damage if the sun repeated a giant flare of 1859, experts said.

The sun is entering a more active phase due to peak in 2013 on a roughly 11-year sunspot cycle, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said. Power supplies, air traffic control, communications and satellites can all be disrupted by storms.

"We are increasingly being impacted by space weather," Barbara Ryan, director of the space weather program at the Geneva-based WMO, told Reuters. She said there was a need to coordinate forecasts and upgrade warnings of looming storms.

"No country has enough resources alone ... we need observations from all over the globe," she said. "A common alerting protocol (is) an issue we will be looking at over the next couple of years" to help limit impacts.

Geomagnetic storms on the sun take between half a day and 5 days to reach the earth after they erupt. China alone has 20 monitoring stations on land tracking the upper atmosphere, the higher ionosphere and the sun.

The 189-member WMO agreed at a May 16-June 3 congress to boost international coordination of space weather, working with the International Space Environment Service and the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Among goals are to "improve space weather warnings to major application areas including aviation," it said. The WMO would encourage sharing of data and help coordinate research.

Early warnings can allow countries to reroute flights to avoid polar routes, turn off unnecessary electric equipment or switch frequencies of some transmissions. In the longer term, research can bring improved designs to shield vulnerable equipment.

A solar superstorm on September 1, 1859 -- named after British astronomer Richard Carrington who observed it -- set off fires in telegraph offices and produced an aurora so bright that people could read newspapers at night by the glow, NASA said.

$2 TRILLION

The high-tech economy is now far more vulnerable. A report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has estimated a similar storm today could cause $1 to $2 trillion in damage and require four to 10 years for recovery, NASA said.

"WMO has an opportunity to coordinate action to address a growing environmental vulnerability," Jack Hayes of the U.S. weather service told a space weather event during the WMO congress in Geneva.

A 2003 storm caused re-routing of flights over polar routes most vulnerable to disturbances, led operators to reduce output from U.S. nuclear power plants and damaged transformers in South Africa, he said.

Ryan said that better forecasts could help the world improve protection for vulnerable personnel, especially astronauts, and equipment such as power stations and communications networks.

Space weather forecasts could get more widely known -- with scales like those used to measure earthquakes or hurricanes. "We'd like to bring the same kind of structure to space weather," she said.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses scales of one to five, where five is the most severe, for geomagnetic storms, solar radiation storms and radio blackouts.

(Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)

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Ask USA TODAY Weather

Doyle Rice, the USA TODAY weather editor, is available to answer your weather and climate questions. Send your questions to askweather@usatoday.com. If your question is selected, you can look for the answer below. Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered, either individually or on this page. ***********************************************

Q: Why is Texas so humid?— D.A. Marquez

A: Eastern Texas and the entire southeastern part of the USA receive plenty of moisture blown in from the nearby Gulf of Mexico, along with evaporated moisture from lakes, rivers, the ground and vegetation. With extensive heating from the spring, summer and fall sun high in the sky at these low latitudes, the evaporation potential is high, and the combination of warm temperatures and high-moisture content makes it really feel muggy.

However, while eastern Texas can be very humid and muggy, much of western Texas is quite dry, thanks to mountain air that dries out as it descends into Texas from Mexico and New Mexico. The dividing line is most pronounced in summer and is known as a dryline, which separates the different air masses.

Our state weather snapshot of Texas has more about the climate of the Lone Star State. — Doyle Rice

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Q: My 8-year old son asked me the other day, "At what temperature can you see your breath?" Can you help us? — John Robinette

A: That was a tough one, so I asked for help from an expert at the National Weather Service, meteorologist James Peronto. Here is his answer:

You can see your breath at a variety of temperatures (even as high as 70 degrees). It really depends on how much moisture is in the air (relative humidity). When you exhale, the air has water vapor in it. That exhaled water vapor is at a certain temperature (typically warmer than the surrounding air you are exhaling into). Warmer air can hold more water vapor.

Therefore, as your exhaled air hits the cooler surrounding air, the water vapor condenses into tiny water droplets (the same way clouds form). The higher the relative humidity of the surrounding air you exhale into, the better chance of creating water droplets from your breath.

So, getting back to your original question, the temperature at which you see your breath can really vary, depending upon the relative humidity of the surrounding air. I've seen my own breath at temperatures around 60 degrees in very moist air! Hope this helps. — James Peronto

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Q: Can it be too cold too snow?— James Hoffman

A: No, it can snow even at very cold temperatures if there's a source of moisture and some way to lift or cool the air. But when temperatures drop into the single digits or below zero, the air's capacity for water vapor becomes very small, making heavy snow unlikely. Most heavy snowfalls happen with relatively warm air temperatures near the ground — usually 15 degrees or above.

One example of a cold place that doesn't get much snow is Barrow, Alaska, where an average of only two inches of snow falls in January, when the average high temperature is only 2 degrees and the average low is -20 degrees.

A little snow even falls at the South Pole, where the temperature hardly ever rises above zero – the highest ever there is 7 degrees. But, the colder the air, the less moisture it has to make snow, which is why a year's worth of South Pole snow melts down to less than two or three inches of water.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center has an FAQ with much more info about snow. — Doyle Rice

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Q: I would like to know the direction of the sunset, when facing the horizon, over several weeks, in the months of September and October. Would the sunset move to the right or to the left on the horizon over 5-day intervals?— Sophia Deno

A: In the Northern Hemisphere, between the summer solstice (roughly June 21) and the winter solstice (roughly Dec. 21), the location at which the sun sets, relative to the observer, moves a fraction toward the left each day. The process reverses between the winter and summer solstices, as the sunset location would move a bit to the right each day.

This USA TODAY resource page and this FAQ page have much more about the seasons, solstices, equinoxes, and the length of days. — Doyle Rice

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Q: I often wonder why the sky, which starts-out brilliant clear on October mornings, usually clouds-up around 10 a.m.? I am a photographer and the clouds dull the colors of the foliage. What's even stranger is that folks just 40 miles to the south, at about 1,000 feet lower altitude, say the sky was sunny all day. Any explanation? This has happened quite a few times. Around 3 p.m., suddenly the clouds dissipate but it's too late for me by then. — Myron Shulman

A: First, when the air is unstable, despite a clear start, clouds tend to increase in the late-morning and into the afternoon.

According to the excellent weather textbook A World of Weather: Fundamentals of Meteorology, these clouds are known as fair-weather cumulus clouds, those shorter heaps of puffy clouds that often develop on a tranquil, sunny day as parcels of surface air are heated by the ground and buoyed upward. Sometimes enough clouds form to entirely cover the sky and rain will fall. The clouds will diminish later in the day as the sun's heating fades away.

This blog entry from Nick Borelli at FoxWeather details more about this.

The air's stability is important for our weather, as it helps determine what types of clouds form and what kinds of precipitation fall from them. This USA TODAY resource page explains much more about atmospheric stability and instability.

Second, as for why more clouds tend to form at higher elevations, it has to do with orographic lift, when air is forced up and over mountains. This air rises, cools, and forms clouds.

For more info, this Google page has lots of photos and diagrams about orographic lift. — Doyle Rice

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Q: Does anyone track the number of daily record high temperatures or daily low temperatures that are set across the USA? It would be interesting to see if there are more record high temperatures than record low temperatures, in view of global warming.— Jack Lucero Fleck

A: Yes. Meteorologist Guy Walton of the Weather Channel has kept track of this since 2000. Through last week, since Jan. 1, 2000, he says there have been 310,437 daily record highs and 152,064 daily record lows. The numbers for all-time record highs and lows are even more striking: Since Jan. 1, 2000, there have been 1,470 all-time record highs and only 40 all-time record lows.

Walton uses this U.S. records database from the National Climatic Data Center to track this.

Walton co-authored a 2009 study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters about this. According to the article abstract, the current ratio of daily record high maximum temperatures to record low minimum temperatures, when averaged across the USA, is about two to one.... Based on one of the global warming scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this ratio is projected to continue to increase, with ratios of about 20 to 1 by mid-century, and roughly 50 to 1 by the end of the century. — Doyle Rice

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Q: With more carbon dioxide and other gases being released into the atmosphere as a result of climate change, is the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level increasing? And, are lighter gases being displaced into outer space because of the increase in CO2, etc.?—David Glass

A: I turned to an expert, Andrew Gettelman, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, for help with these questions. He determined that the answer to both questions is no:

"The gases that are being released add only a little bit of mass to the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide comprises oxygen that's already in the air, as well as carbon stored in the ground. However, the amounts are small and many orders of magnitude less than the changes in mass and pressure caused by regular surface pressure variations due to storms.

The atmosphere, below 60 miles, has a mixture of major long-lived gases (such as oxygen, nitrogen, argon and carbon dioxide), which are not displaced by the gases that are being released by human activities. The gases mix with the other gases, the mixture we call 'air.'" — Andrew Gettelman

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Q: Which presses down on Earth's surface more, a high- or low-pressure area?— Allen Langley

A: High pressure presses down on the Earth more than low pressure, since air sinks in high pressure and rises in low pressure.

As the name says, an area of "high" pressure is an area where the air's pressure is higher than the pressure of the surrounding air. A "low' is where it's lower. Meteorologists don't have any particular number that divides high from low pressure; it's the relative differences that count.

The pressure is high at the surface where air is slowly descending — much too slowly to feel. And, this is going on over a large area, maybe a few hundred square miles. As air descends, it warms, which inhibits the formation of clouds. This is why high pressure is usually associated with nice weather.

The air that descends in high-pressure areas has to get to high altitudes in some way, and its done by rising in areas where the pressure at the surface is low. As air rises it cools. As the air cools, the humidity in it begins to condense into tiny drops of water, or if it's cold enough, into tiny ice crystals. If there's enough water or ice, rain or snow begin to fall. This is why low pressure is associated with bad weather.

Incidentally, I wrote an article last year about new research into how high and low pressure might be a trigger for earthquakes. — Doyle Rice

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Q: What kind of winter are we expecting in the Middle Atlantic states?— Sue Lasater

A: The Climate Prediction Center, the best source for long-term climate forecasts, shows that for the months of December 2010, January 2011 and February 2011, most of the southern tier of states should be warmer than average. The areas that are expected to be colder-than-average are the northern Plains, the Northwest, and much of Alaska. The rest of the nation — including the Mid-Atlantic — should see temperatures close to average. This map shows this.

As for rain and snow, most of the southern tier should be drier-than-average, while the western Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, and Northwest should be wetter than average. Most of the Mid-Atlantic should see a typical amount of rain and snow, with southern Virginia and the Carolinas seeing less precipitation than normal. Winter precipitation map.

These forecasts will continue to be refined and updated over the next several months, with their "official" winter forecast coming out in November.

This forecast is based partially on the fact that the USA has entered a La Nina climate pattern. During typical La Nina winters, significant cold-air outbreaks can be more frequent across the northern tier of the USA, while the southern states experience less storminess and precipitation. In the eastern USA, during a La Nina winter, there are generally fewer coastal storms and more Alberta Clippers than normal.

This USA TODAY graphic shows more about La Nina and El Nino.

AccuWeather also came out with its winter forecast earlier this month. — Doyle Rice

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Q: In a 365-day cycle, does every point on Earth have an equal number of daylight/night minutes?— G. Kiner

A: That's an excellent question, one that stumped me. For help, I contacted Travis Metcalfe, an astrophysicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. Here is his answer:

"For questions like this, I find it helpful to think of the extreme cases (with fictional flat horizons). Someone on the equator gets 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness every day, 365 days a year (no seasons). Someone at one of the poles gets 24 hours of daylight for half the year, and 24 hours of darkness for the other half. This means that at the poles, there is only one sunrise and one sunset per year, as the sun just spirals upwards in the sky for a few months, and then spirals back down.

A slight subtlety is that because Earth is not on a perfectly circular orbit around the sun, the number of days between the spring and fall equinox (186.32 days in 2010) differs from the number of days between fall and spring equinox (178.84 days in 2009-10).

The Earth moves slightly faster when it is closer to the sun (with the peak speed around the New Year), so someone at the North Pole gets 2% less than six months of darkness, while someone at the South Pole gets 2% more than six months. At the mid-latitudes here in the USA, the asymmetry is slightly smaller.

So the final answer would be no, every point on Earth does not get an equal amount of darkness and light in a given year." — Travis Metcalfe

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