Climate change creates maddening 'weather whiplash'
The term "weather whiplash" is being invoked to describe the drought-flood cycles beginning to take over the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.
The cause of the maddening weather extremes and their huge and varied consequences is none other than climate change, according to a new report by the climate science communication organization Climate Nexus, and backed by climate researchers.
"In some parts of the world, including the 1.2 million square miles comprising the Mississippi River Basin, climate change can manifest as alternating periods of 'feast or famine' -- wide swings of extremes such as flooding and drought," the report reads.
The term "weather whiplash" was first invoked to describe this effect by science writer Andrew Freedman in 2009. But now climate scientists are using the term, and pointing to the current floods, in the Midwest as the classic case.
http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/03/18039232-climate-change-creates-maddening-weather-whiplash?lite