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(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Figure 12.28.
(a) Glacier in Mendenhall National Park, Alaska, June 5, 2010. Alita Bobrov/Dreamstime.com.
(b) Turquoise-blue textured ice found in Grey Glacier, Torres Del Paine National Park, in the Southern
Patagonian ice field of the Andes Mountains, Chile, February 22, 2009.
C
Achim Baque/Dreamstime.com.
(c) Iceberg with window in Antarctica, February 29, 2008.
C
Achim Baque/Dreamstime.com. (d) “The Last
Polar Bear” on a shrinking ice floe in the Arctic Ocean.
C
Jan Martin Will/Dreamstime.com.
12.5.2. Changes in Regional Climate,
Severe Weather, and Agriculture
Higher sea-surface temperatures due to global warm-
ing
increase hurricane intensity but not necessarily
their number
.Data analysis suggests a correlation
between higher sea-surface temperatures and increased
hurricane intensity in the North Atlantic and western
North Pacific oceans (Emanuel, 2005) and an increase
in the number of the most intense hurricanes (Cate-
gories 4 and 5) since the 1970s (Webster et al., 2005).
However, changes in the overall number of hurricanes
appear to be due more to a natural cycle than anthro-
pogenic influence.
Changes in regional climate cause a
shift in the loca-
tion of viable agriculture
.Although some crops now
flourish in areas that were once too cold or too dry,
others have died in regions that have become too hot or
Global warming is causing regional and temporal cli-
mate variations. The number of extremely hot days is
increasing, and the number of extremely cold days is
decreasing. By increasing evaporation, global warming
is
increasing precipitation particularly over land
.Pre-
cipitation changes over the ocean are more modest by
comparison. In some cases, higher precipitation is in the
form of more snow, resulting from more water vapor at
those altitudes in the atmosphere where temperatures
are below the freezing point. Global warming is also
increasing droughts in some areas and floods in others
(IPCC, 2007).
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