[Kirk Gregory Czuhai]

Being all of 53 (OMG!)
and living now and a lot of my life in western lower Michigan USA, I have noticed a
distinct change in the climate(?) during my lifetime.

this of course could be do ONLY because of statistical fluctuations but my readings of
google news yesterday indicated that it has been strongly experimentally verified now
that the Earth has warmed up about 1 degree (the article did not indicate whether it
meant celcius or fahreheit!!!) during the last century and with the next century (unless there are big reductions in the green house gas emissions) a rise in temperatures averaged over the Earth of an additional 1-10 degrees.

When I was a child and a teenager living in Grand Rapids, Michigan during the 60's we generally just saw maybe a few flakes of snow in the air when we went trick or treating.
Winters however brought quite a bit of snow however! Now we get FAR LESS SNOW on the average and also fewer very cold nights and days. Then also winter generally broke by about March 1st now March is quite stormy yet with snow; actually this year 2005 had the coldest and snowiest March ever recorded. It has nothing to do with the fact that Grand Rapids is a much larger city now as I live 15 miles west of the main city now in Allendale, Michigan.

All of the seasons actually have just become MORE UN-PREDICTABLE as to just what they will bring! for the 50's, 60's to the mid 70's one could generally know what to expect whether the weather was expected to be hot, cold, rainy, snowy, a January thaw, etc. BUT NOW?

I think THIS TOO, the effects on what us "old" people remember what the weather used to be like, is another indication of Global Warming and could be used to motivate people
into doing SOMETHING about it!!!

Does anybody else have similiar experiences or know friends or relatives that do?

love and peace,
and,
peace and love,
(kirk) kirk gregory czuhai LOVES !

[Turtle]

___Ay, plenty of change I've noticed. Whether locally or elsewhere, personally or by way of news & data, the weather is very chaotic these days.
___Here is a link to a story on drought in the Dakotas:
http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery....asp?name=oahe
___I'm in Vancouver USA & the last couple of years especially seem unpredictable. The weathercasters have my sympathy as their software day after day fails to model even remotely sometimes what we actually receive.
___Despite a fair amount of rain these last few weeks (after a very dry Winter for us), the Columbia River is expected to be at its 5th lowest level ever recorded by this Summer. Many tributaries as well as watersheds East of the Cascades stand to suffer similarly.

[Buffy]

Los Angeles is going to get over 40 inches of rain this year. That's right, not Seattle, Los Angeles. Its a desert! Over three times normal. Only one year in the recorded history of the city has been wetter. Here in SF we had 1 inch of rain in some locations and most of the area got 1/2" of hail, along with a couple of tornados. As I say, this is California. I'm not as old as you guys, but this is weird, and the historical data says so.

There's lots of folks who say this is well within the norms of variability, and there is no proof of any kind that man has anything to do with it, or indeed even can do anything about it.

All Wet,
Buffy

[ShieldDrake]

I agree, over the past few years I have noticed the weather is getting stormier, definitley. Across the world new records are being set, wether it be in rainfall, or lack of it, temperature wise and extreme weather wise (Something like 14 hurricanes hit the US last year alone).
However, until I've lived maybe another ten years, I wouldn't take these at face value, not yet. Scientists predict that this year will be a mild el nino year and they say that last year there was a weak el nino. I don't pretend to be a meteorologist, but I know el nino means that there will be an increased risk of storms during that year, and I believe that this is what we're witnessing at the moment. Coupled with the ever present global warming, espcially in the near future turbulent weather should be expected.
Living in a maritime climate where the weather is controlled by the sea (slow to heat) global warming seems to be having less of an effect on the British Isles, however the weather fronts have been getting ever stronger throughout the last few years as the seas slowly heat. That's my two cents anyway.

Oh and Czuhai, the report was probably talking in terms of degrees Celcius (or Kelvin, it's the same scale). Farenheight is becoming quite archaic as it has no uses in modern science compared to the Kelvin and (coincidentally) the Celsius scale.

[orbsycli]

and why the hell do they call it el niño when in reality that means THE BOY?

[ShieldDrake]

I have no idea. Maybe it's something that when mentioned out of context sounds stupid. Like in Spanish "Me llamo Bob" literally means "I call myself Bob". It sounds really stupid to say in English, but it's perfectly acceptable as an introduction in Spanish.
*shrugs*
Maybe this is why we don't let the Spanish name things all the time.

[C1ay]

Originally Posted by orbsycli

and why the hell do they call it el niño when in reality that means THE BOY?

This article seems to cover it. You could Google it for others.

[paultrr]

Originally Posted by ShieldDrake

I agree, over the past few years I have noticed the weather is getting stormier, definitley. Across the world new records are being set, wether it be in rainfall, or lack of it, temperature wise and extreme weather wise (Something like 14 hurricanes hit the US last year alone).

I'm just about 50 now. I cannot remember ever seeing three of them hit one state straight in a row before like they did last year. When I lived up in Maine I worked with some people who mentioned they've noticed the climate got warmer there over the years since they where a child. I'm not convinced that everything goes back to greenhouse gasses. But weather has been changing a lot.

One reason I mention the not convinced part is if one runs a check on solar flare activity since the 70's as compared to before that period there has been an increase in strength over the same time period generally data on recent global warming is taken from. I came across that in a bit of research about a year ago and its possible there is a connection in all this that's been overlooked. Any heat up source will change the weather across the globe. Some of the heatup does I think stem from the greenhouse gasses. But I suspect not all of the answer is there. If it isn't all coming from one source then global warming could be just a phase of sorts.

[rockytriton]

Originally Posted by orbsycli

and why the hell do they call it el niño when in reality that means THE BOY?

When you have a son, you will understand.

[Turtle]

___We here in the Pacific Northwest continue to experience weird weather, that is to say extreme weather. All of the first 3 weeks of May it rained virtually every day & put us above the average rainfall for the month; now, yesterday & today, we have a record heat wave going on that is breaking 50 year old records. Mon dieu!