Clyde Burnett, Gilpin County. Much of the increased trapped heat energy of the atmospheric greenhouse effect is melting the snow and ice of our mountain glaciers, the polar ice caps, and the Arctic Ocean ice. The Arctic Ocean ice has melted to less than 50% of normal surface area in September, and the Arctic Ocean is expected to ultimately be ice-free in summer.

The Greenland ice cap is losing 47 cubic miles of ice per year. Our mountain glaciers have lost 30% of their ice. The amount of melting is clear evidence of the significant amount of energy imbalance for our planet due to the human-caused increase in the atmospheric greenhouse effect.

Question:  I understand that the Arctic has warmed twice as much as the rest of the world. Why is this?

Answer: The transition from white ice or snow to water is an important feedback process that amplifies global warming. The reflectivity of the incident sunlight of about 85 % on Arctic ice drops to about 15 % for the ocean water.

Question: My climate doesn’t include melting glaciers and Arctic ice. Do we have climate change here?

Answer: Global warming should produce an atmospheric temperature increase and additional atmospheric water from ocean evaporation, which must yield increased precipitation in some fashion. One might have expected a steady 1-2o F warmer temperature, shorter winters, and a bit more moisture for the gardens. But you’ve been waiting for the predicted extreme weather.

The variable weather and the traditional uncertainties of weather forecasts continues, and there is the additional uncertainty in that we’ve never been here before. One cannot hope to extrapolate from last year’s weather, since climate change is continuous. The energy storage and stability of our warm air mass has also been changed, adding to the extreme nature of the precipitation. The tornado frequency and the location and duration of droughts and floods continue to be unpredictable.

We must give thought to the likelihood that local climate change is being assisted by changes in atmospheric circulation caused by a warming Arctic. This developing theory under discussion has been likened to the early theories of plate tectonics and El Nino.

In recent weeks a slightly cold air mass has formed a stationary frontal zone with the more humid warm tropical air mass in the southwest US, perhaps due to these changes in atmospheric circulation. We have also recently experienced a weak jet stream forming a loop at this air mass interface.

Global warming-increased moisture from the Gulf of Mexico began to produce extremely heavy precipitation in an unstable atmosphere. The jet stream circulation guided that persistent series of devastating floods and tornadoes from Texas to Oklahoma and beyond.

After weeks of active weather, the jet stream loop has finally collapsed and the eastern part of the country now has typical springtime storms in a humid atmosphere.

The increased energy trapped by CO2 in our business-as-usual greenhouse effect is contributing to our weather extremes of floods and tornadoes in a nearly saturated atmosphere: get used to it! We can adapt to these precipitation changes, but adapting to floods and tornadoes is costly and will become more so! (But we need the moisture??) So when will we have a consensus that we must act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?