How would weather be impacted by climate change?

Question

This is something that needs to seriously be considered when talking about climate change

Answer 1

Weather patterns can change.   Precipitation timing and type can change. Warm air can hold more water than cool air, so places in the south that heat up and stay hot without a cool air mass pushing in may not experience the same rainfall patterns they use to.  And places further north that were cooler but are now warmer may have more rain because the warm air holds more water.  If a cool air mass moves in to these areas, you can get heavy rain and flooding.  In some places, freezing rain and ice will be more common in winter because the temperature is to close to freezing, there is a lot of water in the air, and it doesn't get cold enough to make snow or sleet (both are better than freezing rain from a human point of view - they are much less destructive and disruptive to power lines, traffic etc.).  

With temperature changes, heat waves may become more frequent or last longer, as will droughts in some areas.  The variation in temperature may become more extreme.  Where some areas in the winter historically get very cold for long periods, they may get unseasonably warm for a few days then extremely cold for a number of days.  This can become more common and mess up budding (early budding of some plants could be killed off by frosts that may occur), animal shedding and hibernation patterns, and insect life (beneficial and nuisance insects) can be disrupted.   This can have a huge effect on agriculture as well as human comfort and health.  This is the very short list and doesn't consider a lot that others will cover.

All of this with just a small change in the mean climate numbers.  Mean numbers by definition reduce the influence of the variation to look at long term trends.

Answer 2

the air is now able to hold more moisture which in turn leads to heavier, longer rains.  This rain is what has cuase much of the flooding in the midwest

Answer 3

That is an interesting an important question and Bob has already highlighted some of what might happen.. Barring something huge like the global conveyor belt (Gulf Stream) shutting down, a couple of things that we expect to see are that the current mid-latitude dry climates (Mediterranean climates) will become drier than they have been.  This may already be happening in places like California.  Additionally an important effect is that snow levels will go up, so that more precipitation will fall as rain.  This has huge impacts in areas (like California) that depend on snowpack for water storage. The storm tracks are expected to shift poleward, and in fact there has already apparently been a northward movement of the northern hemisphere polar jet.

The real interesting question is what will happen with hurricanes, and there doesn't seem to be any clear-cut answer yet.  Since the thermal heat content of the ocean will go up, one would naively expect stronger hurricanes, and some people (Emanuel, Curry and Webster) already think they've seen this.  However, many models forecast increased wind shear and decreased numbers of hurricanes, so we may end up with fewer, but stronger, storms.  Also, as areas of ocean temperature greater than 80 F expand in the Eastern North Pacific there may be increased hurricane activity along the west coast of Mexico and even occasional storms reaching the Southwestern U.S.

And, if the tropopause rises thunderstorms may become stronger, or at least produce more rain, since the convection depth will be greater.

Answer 4

There will be more thunderstorms and blizzards.

Answer 5

Two big effects.

First, precipitation patterns will change.  That's going to play havoc with agriculture and irrigation systems, causing very expensive damage.

Second, heat fuels weather systems.  More heat, more extreme weather.  Recent NOAA report about that:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008...