Weather Patterns and Climate Change

• As early as the 1930s, the person on the street was discussing how “the weather wasn’t what it used to be.”  How is your personal experience with the weather congruent or incongruent with what climate scientists are telling us?

Growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina I am accustomed to warm summers and mild winters. During the summer I remember summer days as typically being in the upper eighties or lower nineties with thunderstorms fairly common in the afternoon.In the past ten years, Raleigh has experienced two severe droughts along with several years of below average rainfall. Most winters Raleigh could expect at least one snow storm of about five inches and a few additional small snow showers. Raleigh had a blizzard in 2000 dropping nearly two feet of snow overnight. Since then, however, Raleigh has seldom had more than a few inches of snow at a time.

Temperatures in the area have also reached record setting highs more in the past fifteen years than in the preceding sixty. In accordance with scientific observations of global climate trends, many of the record setting low temperatures occurred during the 1970s when the Earth was in a noticeable, although short, period of cooling.

The lack of large snowstorms and the abundance of heat waves and drought appears to be congruent with scientific reasoning, however, the actual data of North Carolina weather and climate does not parallel these findings. Between 2000 and 2011 there were nearly four times as many snow events compared to the period between 1990 and 1999. Similarly, heating trends appear to have an equally deceptive nature. Despite the recent high temperatures, the 1940s had comparable temperatures. Drought, too, has a history in North Carolina with records going back nearly 1,000 years through tree ring analysis.

Personal experience alone has indicated a rapidly warming climate, however, historical records indicate less significant of a changing climate pattern in the area. By looking at the past twenty years, a very distinct warming trend exists. Scientists have noticed this trend since the early 1900s and have clearly determined the warming to be anthropogenic. Because of North Carolina’s temperate climate and the variability of weather, scientists are still hesitant to label the extent of the impact.

*historical records and climate observations found at http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/ and http://www.weather.gov/climate/local_data.php?wfo=rah