The Wild Weather Patterns

March 24, 2010 - PRLog -- With climate warming high on the global agenda, the United States of America have just gone through the worst and coldest winter in the past 25 years. According to the National Climatic Data Centre it is also the 19th wettest winter ever recorded.

Now the US settles into its tornado season, where a 79-year old man, sheltering in his single storey wood-frame home, has become the first victim. One person was injured as another tornado ripped through Haines City, Florida, destroying four condos and damaging fifteen others. Two other tornadoes caused minor damage in central Florida.

Along the Mid-Atlantic coast up to four inches of rain have been expected, along with the melting of the winter’s major snowstorms. With the soil already saturated from the heavy snowstorms, flooding is expected.

However, further to the north of the continent, David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada, alerted the population of potential ‘horrific’ water shortages, insect infestations and wildfires this summer, due to Canada experiencing its warmest and driest winter on record. Phillips blamed El Nino for the warm winter weather and the severe loss of arctic sea ice last fall.

Canadian winters have warmed, on average, by 2.5degrees centigrade over the past 63 years.

Australia, one of the world’s driest continents in the Southern Hemisphere, is slowly emerging from what scientists have called the ‘one in a thousand years drought’.

Over the past 8 years, Australia has experienced the worst drought in living memory, with over half of Australia’s farmland in the brutal grip of drought conditions.

The Murray-Darling river system, which receives 4% of Australia’s water, but provides three-quarters of the water consumed nationally, was already at 54% below the previous record minimum, as far back as 2006. The drought update to the Murray and Darling River systems still shows the mighty river to be in very poor condition.

A water management expert at the University of Adelaide, Mike Young, reported to Reuters that Australia's long-term climate was changing. "When the drought breaks we will not return to cooler, wetter conditions. It is the worst type of drought because we are not expecting to return back to the old regime. The last half of last century was much wetter.

What we seem to have done is ... built Australia on the assumption that it was going to be wetter, and we haven't been prepared to make the change back to a much drier regime."

About Wild Weather Patterns
For more information:http://www.tropicpost.com/upside-down-weather/
Feel free to contact Wendy on admin@youmesupport.org

Dr Wendy Stenberg-Tendys and her husband are CEO's of YouMe Support Foundation (http://youmesupport.org) provide high school education grants for children who are without hope. You can help in this really great project by taking a few minutes to check out the Sponsor a Student program at Win a Resort (http://winaresort.com). It really will change your life.

# # #

YouMe Support Foundation is a non-profit charity, raising funds for non-repayable higher-education grants for geographically and financially disadvantaged children.