6 Ways Climate Change Is Ruining Summer for Everyone{MAPS}

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/environment/6-ways-climate-change-ruining-summer-everyone



1. Drought.

As climate change worsens, wet areas will see more precipitation, while dry areas are just going to get drier.



2. Wildfires.

A number of factors, including development and a decades-long policy of fire suppression, combine to intensify wildfire season, but warmer and drier conditions can increase the frequency and intensity of dangerous blazes. As spring snowmelt occurs earlier and summer pushes into the fall, the burn season extends; as a 2012 Climate Central report showed, both temperatures and the number of large fires are increasing in Western states:



3. Air pollution.

The dominoes continue to fall: As warming leads to drought leads to wildfires, those big burns in turn release a “ mix of gases and fine particles” that can at best be irritating and at worst make you sick. You can live hundreds of miles away from a wildfire’s burn zone and still be at risk; in 2011, the area affected by smoke, a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council found, was 50 times greater than the area burned by fire:



4. Mosquitoes, everywhere.

Warmer temperatures, heavy rainfall (remember, wetter areas get wetter) and high humidity make conditions ripe for ticks and mosquitoes, whose range is expanding. And they’ll bring West Nile virus, Dengue Fever and Lyme disease along with them. That’s certainly the case for the Asian Tiger Mosquito; a study from last August found that over the next two decades, the amount of land area the pest covers will likely increase from 5 to 16 percent.

[liberal N proud]

1. We are going to have record cold snap this week

Some weather commentators are calling it Polar Vortex 2.

Highs here are only expected to reach the upper 50's o Wednesday. This should bring out the climate change deniers.