GUEST COMMENTARY: A reconsideration of local climate change observations
Last year, The Daily Star published a commentary on my observations of climate change over a span of several decades. Now that another year has passed, I’d like to update that column and offer some new thoughts.
In my prior commentary, titled “Observing Local Climate Change for 36 Years,” from the Sept. 14, 2024 edition of The Star, I warned that we were in a new climate regime, where the meaning of a “200-year storm” or a “500-year storm” was largely obsolete, because there is no longer any true reference for the climate conditions we are now experiencing. I also warned that we were likely to see local weather events beyond our imagining. Since that column, we have dodged a local weather disaster on the scale of the floods of 2006 and 2011, but we have seen catastrophic events around the country, notably the terrible flooding in western North Carolina from hurricane Helene, the wildfires in metro Los Angeles, and the Texas hill country flood.
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