A Mittenless Autumn, for Better and Worse
" Dr. Edward S. Sarachik, a professor of atmospheric sciences
at the University of Washington in Seattle, said it was
especially significant that 2001 had proved so warm. Usually,
the conditions in a single year are discounted by climate
scientists because weather conditions vary naturally over
short time spans, pushed this way or that by unpredictable
shifts in sea temperatures and wind patterns.
But in 2001 there was no such push - in particular, no sign
of El Niño, the ocean condition in which unusually warm
waters spread across the Pacific. El Niño has exerted a
powerful influence in many other recent unusually warm
years, including 1998, the warmest year on record. But this
year, the Pacific has just emerged from the opposite, cooler
condition, La Niña."
The New York Times
December 23, 2001
SCIENCE
By PAM BELLUCK and ANDREW C. REVKIN
Across the Northeast, people
opened their doors yesterday
to discover something unfamiliar: a
chill in the air.
Weeks later than usual,
temperatures have finally
descended into something like
their normal late- December
range. The cold snap followed an
autumn in which sidewalk cafes
stayed open into December, golf
courses were packed with plaid
and the first World Series game
ever played in November felt more
like May. The unseasonal curveball
that the weather threw at the
calendar affected almost everyone,
for better and for worse.
Varel Bailey, a cattle and pig
farmer in Anita, Iowa, has been
spending 5 percent to 10 percent
less on grain because cattle eat
less when it is not cold.
In New Mexico, Ski Santa Fe, a
snow-starved resort, had to
postpone its planned Thanksgiving
Day opening to Dec. 8, and even
now has less than half its skiing
areas open.
In the natural world, daffodils
bloomed, and the grass at the New
York Botanical Garden was a lush
green the week before Christmas.
In Pennsylvania, a baby killdeer
hatched in December instead of
April. And in Massachusetts, Bill
Davis, a state wildlife biologist,
came home from a deer station one
recent day with a sunburn.
"It's global warming, dude," said Pito Robles, 28, an auto
mechanic who on Thursday was dangling his fishing line into
the Hudson River near West 66th Street in Manhattan. "I
don't care if the whole planet burns up in a hundred years. If
I can get me a fish today, it's cool by me."
In fact, the warm spell that settled over much of the nation
this fall may not be caused by global warming, the gradual
but potentially calamitous rise in worldwide temperatures
that most scientists attribute, at least in part, to
fuel-burning human activities like making electricity and
driving. When burned, fuels release carbon dioxide and other
"greenhouse gases" that trap heat in the atmosphere.
The fall weather could have been a fluke, climatologists
agree, because in the short run weather often does
unanticipated things.
But the unusually balmy fall seems to fit at least two
longer-term patterns. One is that the weather has become
significantly more erratic and variable, and that is likely to
continue, scientists say.
Another is that the warming trend is destined to continue.
This year is expected to be the second warmest on earth
since 1860, when temperatures were first measured
systematically. Nine of the 10 warmest years have occurred
since 1990. And one of the world's leading forecasting
agencies, the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and
Research in Britain, says there is a 75 percent chance that
next year will be even warmer than this year.
So far, the results of global warming in North America seem
to be a mix of good and bad. Since 1960, New England has
seen the last hard freeze come a day earlier every three
years, extending the growing season. But in the Middle
Atlantic and the South, shores are receding as seas, slowly
raised by melting glaciers, eat away at coasts.
And Alaska, where warming has been most pronounced, is
undergoing a host of changes. Glaciers are receding,
permafrost melting, shrubs spreading across previously
barren tundra. The start of the Iditarod dog race this year
had to be moved north because the trail near the usual
starting point was too mushy.
But the growing variability of the weather may be as
troublesome as the warming. This weekend, after a
mittenless fall, temperatures are plummeting quickly across
the country. And the prospect of a sudden, sustained cold
snap is making many people uneasy.
Will birds that delayed their ritual migration be trapped up
north by frigid weather? Will buds that bloomed in
December's warm chicanery burst their pipes and suffer
winter damage?
"The party is almost over for people who like warm weather,"
said Jon B. Davis, a meteorologist for Salomon Smith Barney
in Chicago. "Wednesday's 49 degrees in Chicago was probably
the warmest we will see until late March. We are headed
into a major-league cold pattern."
Labor and Industry
Even if this winter is about to earn its reputation, the fall's
warm weather has made its mark - economically,
environmentally and in other ways.
It has been a boon to workers at the site of the World Trade
Center disaster. Joe Bradley, the foreman of a crew of
machine operators struggling to clear rubble at ground zero,
said the mild weather allowed them to clean up the site
quickly and to recover bodies they might not have otherwise
found.
"It gave us an opportunity to get the bulk of the work done,"
Mr. Bradley said. "It was a gift from God, a real miracle."
Economically, the warm spell has cut both ways, benefiting
some industries while hurting others. Warm weather, it
turns out, may get people out of their houses, but not
necessarily into stores. Foot traffic may have increased,
retailers say, but people tend to window-shop. And they are
not buying the winter supplies that stores have stocked. As a
result, retailers have slashed prices on things like coats,
scarves and gloves.
"Warm weather is not good for retailers," said Scott
Bernhardt, senior vice president in charge of retail research
at Planalytics, a consulting firm in Wayne, Pa., that provides
long-range weather predictions and marketing advice to
retailers. "A winter like this hurts because retailers don't
plan on it."
Snow shovel sales are down about two-thirds for the 7,200
hardware stores in the TruServ cooperative in Chicago, said
Ray Winkel, its director of inventory management. But snow
blowers are selling well. "Unlike snow shovels, they are not
an impulse purchase, and people remembered what a tough
winter last year was," Mr. Winkel said.
And other industries are clearly benefiting from the warmth.
Scott Arves, president of Schneider National in Green Bay,
Wis., the huge trucking company known for its orange fleet,
said the mild weather had resulted in hundreds fewer
accidents, lower maintenance costs and on-time delivery
rates rare in late fall and winter, when a single storm can
delay 1,000 Schneider trucks.
Warm weather has depressed demand for natural gas, and,
partly as a result, prices have fallen sharply - to $2.60 per
million B.T.U.'s of gas to be delivered next month, from $10
last winter. That has helped consumers in the upper
Midwest, where gas provides 90 percent of the home heating
energy.
In agriculture, the warmth has generally been welcome.
Livestock farmers can buy less grain, not only because cows
eat less in warm weather but also because breeding stock
can stay out in the fields longer to forage. Grain farmers can
expect to pay less for fertilizer, because natural gas is a
major component.
In states like Florida, rising temperatures may change
growing patterns. A 1989 freeze pushed the citrus belt south,
said Jim Lushine, a National Weather Service meteorologist,
but warmer weather may have the opposite effect. "We could
see a return, a northward shift in some of the growing
climates in Florida," he added, "and that might actually
prove to be a boon for some people."
Flora and Fauna
Some plants and animals have reacted to the warm cycle as
if it were a false spring.
Spring peepers are calling, woodpeckers and ruffed grouse
have been drumming, said Mr. Davis, the wildlife biologist.
More ticks seem to be active late into the year, he said. And
in Montana, the Bitterroot Valley has been alive with
butterflies that would normally be hibernating.
Most birds that migrate over long distances are not affected
by the warmth because they would already have been in the
tropics by September. But other species, like ducks and
geese, which migrate shorter distances, have stayed north.
Two calliope hummingbirds were first spotted at Fort Tryon
Park in Manhattan about a month ago, when they would
ordinarily be in Mexico, and were still at the park last week.
The birds that have stayed north could suffer if a sudden
cold snap causes ponds and lakes to freeze, making food
unavailable for several days, said Dr. Jeff Price, director of
Climate Change Impact Studies for the American Bird
Conservancy.
Deer may actually benefit from the warmth. The deer
population got winter coats on time, but then was less active
and consumed fewer calories because of the higher
temperatures, Mr. Davis said, adding, "This sends them into
winter in better condition to survive."
Many plants may not do as well. At the New York Botanical
Garden, Dr. Kim Tripp, vice president for horticulture and
living collections, said the prolonged warmth, coupled with a
long drought, had left trees and other plants
discombobulated and stressed. To survive the winter, Dr.
Tripp said, plants have to go through a long process of
shutting down: annuals die, perennials kill off their tops,
deciduous plants shed their leaves, evergreens pump
antifreeze into their needles.
"It's still October for the plants," she said. If it suddenly goes
from October to January, water could freeze in the plants'
cells and burst them. If the freeze hits anything that has
actually flowered, it will not develop buds for next spring, she
said.
Several years of these conditions could take a toll on trees,
too. Mature canopy could be lost because such stress leaves
trees more vulnerable to disease and insects.
"You fight off a cold better when you are healthy and
vigorous," Dr. Tripp said. "When you are stressed your
metabolism is slower and healing is slower."
The Outlook
Even if this past fall's warm weather was only a blip in the
global thermostat, most scientists are beginning to believe
that human alteration of the atmosphere is at least partly
responsible for a warming trend that has been going on for
decades.
"I think it's increasingly clear that humans are influencing
the climate," said Dr. Peter H. Gleick, director of the Pacific
Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and
Security in Oakland, Calif. "I think the debate over whether
the climate is going to change is over, and now the debate is
what will the impacts be, how bad will they be and what
should we do about it."
Dr. Edward S. Sarachik, a professor of atmospheric sciences
at the University of Washington in Seattle, said it was
especially significant that 2001 had proved so warm. Usually,
the conditions in a single year are discounted by climate
scientists because weather conditions vary naturally over
short time spans, pushed this way or that by unpredictable
shifts in sea temperatures and wind patterns.
But in 2001 there was no such push - in particular, no sign
of El Niño, the ocean condition in which unusually warm
waters spread across the Pacific. El Niño has exerted a
powerful influence in many other recent unusually warm
years, including 1998, the warmest year on record. But this
year, the Pacific has just emerged from the opposite, cooler
condition, La Niña.
A milder climate has short-term and long-term
consequences for everything from water supplies to beaches.
Higher temperatures, for example, mean reduced snow melt
from the Sierras, on which California's reservoirs depend.
"As the earth is warming, less of our precipitation will be
snow and more will fall as rain, and that has a whole series
of problems for us," Dr. Gleick said. "It means we're going to
get more runoff in the winters when we're most worried
about floods. And at the other end it means our spring and
our summer runoff is going to be reduced - and that's when
we need it most."
In Alaska - and much of Siberia - the annual mean
temperature has risen 3 to 5 degrees over the last 30 years,
said Prof. Gunter Weller, director of the Cooperative Institute
for Arctic Research at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.
"There's no doubt over all that the Arctic has warmed pretty
substantially, and that it's causing serious problems,"
Professor Weller said. Among the effects are increased
coastal erosion from melting glaciers, which have raised the
sea level in the region, and thawing in the permafrost that
has wreaked havoc with roads and could eventually damage
structures like the 800-mile- long trans-Alaska pipeline.
Elsewhere, continued warming could produce rising sea
levels and more frequent and more severe storms. Seas will
rise with temperatures because water expands as it warms,
and because melting terrestrial ice will send water flowing
into oceans. Hurricanes draw their energy from the heat in
ocean waters, so warming could make them more frequent
and more powerful.
The consequences would be most serious for the East and
Gulf Coasts, which are lined with low-lying barrier islands. A
rise of one to three feet in the sea level, which many
scientists predict by the end of this century, could send sea
water 100 feet or more inland on these stretches of coast, in
communities where the federal government is spending tens
of millions of dollars a year to pump sand onto shrinking
beaches.
The new evidence of human- caused warming comes as the
Bush administration is turning its attention back to climate
change, which it had approached with skepticism and a
determination to choose no remedies that might hinder the
use of coal, oil and other fossil fuels.
Most notably, last March Mr. Bush rejected the Kyoto
Protocol, the first international agreement that would
require industrialized countries to cut emissions of
greenhouse gases or face penalties. The last details were
approved by almost every other major country at a meeting in
November, although the treaty still awaits ratification.
In the next month or two, the Commerce Department,
answering a request by Mr. Bush last summer, is planning to
issue a new research plan aimed at improving United States
climate monitoring and modeling efforts.
Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, is one of many
from both parties in Congress seeking significant new
efforts, especially climate research.
"I have asked that consideration be given in the coming
budget to increase activities," Mr. Stevens said, "to zero in on
places where they know they can get some firm data and get
some firm predictions."
Others in Congress are proposing bills to limit releases of
carbon dioxide from power plants, but Mr. Bush rejected
such a move last spring.
While officials debate how to deal with the phenomenon,
temperatures continue to climb.
Along with whatever warming might be happening because of
human activities, federal scientists say, the Pacific is
emerging from its most recent cool spell and the warm
waters of another El Niño are getting ready to spread
.
nytimes.com |
