Increasing air temperatures, due to global warming, lead to an increased amount of hot air in the atmosphere. Hot air leads to unstable weather; this correlation could potentially link global warming to an increase in the strength, duration, and frequency of storms and other violent weather.
Hot air cools as it rises, as a result of its expansion due to the lower pressure found at higher altitudes. Importantly, the heat is not transferred to the surrounding air-the loss of heat is due to a decreased amount of energy in the air and the increased volume of the given parcel of air. If the rising air is at a different temperature than the air it rises into, "unstable" weather conditions will result, such as storms. The greater the discrepancy in temperature, the more violent the resulting weather will be.
If global warming continues, surface air will become warmer and warmer. As this warm air rises into the cooler atmosphere, the weather patterns could become less and less stable over the years.
Surface air temperatures have, in fact, been recorded to rise over time, across the globe. The rise has been calculated to be just less than 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.555 degrees C) per decade; this value seems small but it is not insignificant. The British Antarctic Survey (BAS), led by John Turner, reported in the year 2006 that the surface air temperature at the Antarctic Peninsula has risen at a rate three times greater than the rest of the Earth, in the past 30 years, which could be leading to the rising ocean levels.
Nevertheless, some experts warn that weather trends at the poles, such as Antarctica, should not be regarded in the same way as those trends closer to the equator. The temperatures at these extremes of the Earth have not been recorded as long as in regions closer to the equator. Additionally, the atmospheric and surface temperature inertia is largest at the equator due to the largest amount of surface area of the Earth, also affecting the rate of temperature changes.
