Amber Litzenberger

I heard something the other day that had me thinking about extreme weather in other areas of the world. Used as we Albertans are to the whims of Mother Nature, we find these last few months of on-again off-again weather patterns hard to swallow. It’s hot, it’s cold, it’s wet, it’s dry – oh, there’s the snow again.
We aren't the only ones, and we should probably be thankful that the weather is unable to make up it's mind, rather than pummel us as it has been doing elsewhere.
A friend of mine whom I work with went into Lethbridge and had his haircut at some downtown barbershop whose name escapes me. It was a normal enough thing, what was somewhat extraordinary was what this barbershop was going to do with all the hair it was trimming: it was sending the clippings south to help clean up that massive oil spill. I thought that in itself was a great thing and it almost made me want to go get a haircut.
Then, as I continued thinking and working, I thought about other things going on down south. How many hurricanes and devastating tropical storms (not to mention earth quakes and volcanos, I’m not even going THERE) have we had in the last five years? Have not their numbers been rising?
That question brought to mind something I heard on the radio the other day. David Suzuki’s voice came on and told the listeners that the overall number of tropical storms would, due to effects on weather patterns, global warming, pollution, etc., decrease while the number of extreme tropical storms would increase. That, I thought, is not very comforting. Perhaps I am too young to really remember, but natural disasters have never seemed so common.
Most researchers say the increase in severity of tropical storms can be traced back to the ’70s, although it can even be seen (subtly) all the way back to 1950. The increased severity and number of these storms is due to many factors, a large point (and something that David Suzuki would point out as part of global warming) would be the rising temperatures in the oceans. Warmer waters lead to more thunderstorms over the oceans and when several of these thunderstorms converge, not to mention adding some high winds into the mix, you get a tropical storm. The warmer the temperatures of the water, the more intense and more frequent the storms.
The more I learn the more it seems that the temperature of the oceans has everything to do with these changing weather patterns all over the world. Which actually makes a lot of sense when you consider that our planet is composed of 70-75 per cent water. One website I visited (climate.org) predicted this: ‘simulations suggest that wind speeds will increase by one to eight per cent and rainfall rates will increase by six to 18 per cent for every one degree Celsius  rise in sea surface temperatures. Therefore, as climate change leads to progressively warmer ocean temperatures, tropical storm intensity will increase as well.’
So, for better or for worse, it seems that tropical storms will become something that we will all have to deal with. After all, I heard that the storms to come this year are expected to hit the east coast of Canada. They had a taste of it last year, this time I wouldn’t be taking pictures if I were there.