I recently attended a talk by Dr. Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist who also has drawn more than his share of biased criticism and even very harsh personal attacks for his work.

His recent book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, relates his work on reconstructing the climate back thousands of years, but as the title insinuates, how his findings have lead to political, philosophical and personal attack. Climate is always changing as shown in this reconstruction back millions of years.

But the key question remains: "Is human activity now a principal driver of some recent rapid changes in climate?"  

Mann and almost 100 percent of 1000s of climate scientists believe the answer is yes, we are changing the earth's climate, as a recent survey of scientists shows.

So what does this have to do with the cave bear? 

Archeologists (not meteorologists) have found some evidence that early humans and cave bears probably had contact. 

Original art by Zdnek Burian

Imagine your family struggling to survive in the shelter of a cave and this monster shows up at the door or opening of the cave.  You fight the cave bear to defend your family or clan.

The cave bear was a short-term threat. Humans are very good at responding to short-term threats. It's the way we have survived and are "wired" to respond to short term rather than long-term threats.  The long-term change rise in global temperature during the last 100+ years is obvious. 

NASA GISS

The projections of most simulations of global temperatures 50-100+ years from now are pretty consistent and not really different than Michael Mann's "hockey stick". Latest here and below

IPCC WG1 2007

But for so many of us trying to balance this week's budget, or with no good planning for retirement 10-30 years from now (the Cave Bear is far away), how can we think about or make decisions about what might be major changes to the world and our country's climate 100 years from now?

Especially if some short term climate projections are for relatively steady temperatures over the next decade?  

UK Met Office Latest Decadal Forecast

It's the question I asked Michael Mann. The climate Cave Bear is not here yet but he's coming. Once it's obvious it's here, our short term instinctive wiring won't help us easily change the climate any more than it helps us change the tide. 

Long term decisions, meanwhile are very difficult to make and sure even more difficult to get consensus about from now, about 7 Billion of us on our changing earth.

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This is a follow-up blog to a story I had on our 11PM news Tuesday May 14.  You can see the actual story below but I wanted to expand a few things beyond 1 minute and 30 seconds. Here's the tease :>).  Do you live in a city?  Marshall Shepherd, a leader in the increasing important field of urban meteorology (and current President of the American Meteorological Society) writes in a recent book that by 2030, 80% of the world's population will live in an "urban environment"  So you or you children, do or likely will live, in a city.  Do you notice the city is warmer than the "countryside" or "rural area"?  Yes cities are warmer, especailly on hot summer nights.  It's called the urban heat island or UHI.  We can see it.

The concrete, buildings, streets, ashphalt absord heat in the day and just like a hot pot of water are slow to cool at night.  I think everyone living in a city, during a summer heat wave knows cities are hotter.  Is the city weather different than the "rural" weather?  I hope you think yes-at least on summer nights cities are warmer.  Also warmer on winter nights-which helps the heating bills.  OK is the "climate" (think average summer temperaturers) of the cities different?  Is the climate of the cities changing?  Yes, I know slipperly slope and not going there.  But let's just agree that on a small scale (let's call it a microclimate) the climate is changing.  So now what about summer thunderstorms?  Here is a series of radar images that Marshall Shepherd thinks shows were started in part by the Atlanta urban area in a northeast flow of unstable air.

 The story I did via Skype is with one of the leading researchers in urban meteorology Dr. Robert Bornstein.  His ideas about cities affecting thunderstorms came about by talking with NWS forecasters who observed thunderstorm lines that seemed to "split" as they moved into New York City.  He wonded why and thought that maybe cities can by either the heat island or the city structure/buildings can change  the motion or flow of thunderstorms or even lines of storms. 

  He set out to test his idea/theory by experiemts.  He and students made physical/mathematical simulations of the city and the atmopshere and found in some special cases thunderstorms do split around NYC. 

  Also his ideas that cities, as  Marshall Shepherd has found in Atlanta, Georgia, under certain conditions may even be the starting point of individual storms.  And here  Washington-Baltimore area  may indeed change lines of thunderstorms in the Washington area as some researchers have suggested.  So here is the short story.  See what you think.  Are cities changing our weather?

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I remember, as a young boy, watching the night sky to see the first artifical satellite call "Sputnik" in 1957.  Our world and our ability to observe our world has changed tremendously in since that small object was launched into orbit around the earth.  Here is a wonderful, beautiful video from NASA that takes us on a journey above our home.  Earth observations from satellites have made incredible advances in the 56 years since I saw the first satellite.  Enjoy.

Here is the link to watch the video in higher resolution.

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