On cold days, Francis Tarasewicz dons long johns, sweat pants, snow pants, hoodies, outerwear jackets, a scarf, gloves, gloves and goggles to make the trek a few hundred feet outdoors to the precipitation station at Mount Washington Observatory.
When the wind blows hard on the 6,288-foot peak, New Hampshire's highest peak, the ride takes up to 20 minutes and makes the flapping of a car's hood sound like a chainsaw.
Facing such extreme conditions, Tarasewicz — a weather observer and education specialist at the observatory, a nonprofit research organization — and his colleagues documented a year of crazy extremes on the mountain in 2023, with wild swings in rain, snow and temperatures.
Like thousands of researchers around the world, they are accumulating mounting evidence that climate change is bringing more unusual weather, even in frigid locations like this northeast landmark.
Known to be fickle, global weather is swinging from one extreme to another more often and more often as a warming atmosphere pushes natural fluctuations to new extremes, breaking records again and again, researchers say.
The latest National Climate Assessment, launched by the federal government in late November, said these wilder weather extremes — heavy rainfall, record heat waves and more — are “one of the most direct ways” people are exposed to climate change.
“People are experiencing climate change right outside their windows, especially through the impacts of extreme weather events,” said Alison Crimmins, director of this fifth national assessment.
According to the report, human-induced climate change is changing the intensity, frequency and duration of many extreme events during each season of the year. Droughts, floods and forest fires are becoming more frequent and severe, with ripple effects in every part of the country.
Globally, scientists expect such events to become more frequent and occur more frequently without larger and more urgent reductions in fossil fuel emissions.
US and world leaders say it is not too late to change the course of extremist events. The degree to which it persists or worsens depends on the choices we make now, the assessment says. “The future is largely in the hands of humans.”
The risk of extreme events is increasing
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the increasing extreme events are not just setting records. “They're breaking records.”
He said the broken records and sudden shifts in extremes this year are “signs of warming” that have “tremendous consequential” impacts. “It's something I think we're starting to see now in everything that's unfolding around us.”
The biggest onshore fluctuations occur in rainfall and drought, Swain said. These fluctuations are due to the effect of warming on the hydrological cycle, which is one reason they refer to it as the rainfall strike.
Others use terms such as “global anomaly,” “weather anomaly,” and “weather strike” to describe how warming increasingly affects extreme weather and climate fluctuations.
With each increase in warmer temperatures, the atmosphere holds more water vapor that can fall out as rain or snow, exacerbating extreme precipitation events.
This ability to hold water vapor increases dramatically with temperature, and changes much faster than the temperatures themselves, Swain said. Evaporation rates also increase as temperatures rise, drawing more water from plants and soil and increasing the severity of drought.
On page after page, the climate assessment shows how rising temperatures cause extreme variability. Additional warming means more water vapor, more dryness, and more instability. These impacts, in turn, cause more damage and greater losses and increase the risk of catastrophic consequences.
The number of hot days is expected to increase significantly if temperatures continue to rise. Warmer temperatures and marine heatwaves are expanding the oceans, further rising sea levels along with the flow from melting glaciers. The assessment notes that sea levels are expected to increase the number of coastal flooding events that disrupt life in coastal communities, such as the tidal surge that hit across the country in November.
The risk of two or more extreme events — known as compound events — occurring simultaneously or in quick succession in the same region is also increasing, said Robbie Leung, a climate scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and lead author of the federal climate book. Department of Earth Sciences Evaluation.
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The report said that such compound events could cause cascading failures that threaten livelihoods, and are particularly harmful to farmers and fishermen. For example, catastrophic combinations of warm water, drought, and heavy runoff caused by heavy rains have led to harmful algal blooms and contributed to the deaths of large numbers of fish and shellfish in coastal areas.
Even extreme phenomena in different locations can be linked to complex natural systems, Leung said, for example the Canadian wildfires that blanketed residents across the northern United States in acrid, hazy smoke over the summer.
The weather is strange all over the world
Dramatic transformations have been seen around the world this year, and not just in Mount Washington. They include:
Fort Lauderdale's rain was “unbelievable,” said Steve Bowen, chief science officer and meteorologist at Gallagher Re, a global reinsurance broker. Similar heavy rains occurred in the city in November, at the same time as the monsoon high tide.
The massive climate surges that occur more often leave people and their insurance companies increasingly vulnerable, Bowen said.
'More extremism becoming more extreme'
This year proved a new record for multi-billion dollar disasters in the country. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has reported $25 billion worth of disasters due to extreme weather events.
In addition to direct economic losses, extreme weather events lead to business disruption, decreased property values, poor air quality, and increased deaths and illnesses. The assessment indicates that farmers are taking one hit after another, especially in the Midwest.
Dennis Greer Jamerson's family has seen its share of treacherous weather at Lyles Station, Indiana, where six generations of her father's family have farmed for more than 150 years.
“There have always been weather issues, but now they are becoming more extreme,” Jamerson said. “We are facing more extremism that is becoming more extreme.”
Within the last two years they had been subjected to a severe drought, followed immediately by such heavy rains that her father, Norman Greer, planted it once, and then planted it again, but was unable to raise any crop.
“We saw a lot of barren fields because farmers couldn't get to the fields because it was too wet,” she said. “It's really crazy, it's exhausting, and the costs are astronomical.”
Festivals have had to adaptClimate change is disrupting historical weather patterns
Back east on Mount Washington, years of temperature data show that extreme events are increasing, especially during the spring and fall, Tarasewicz said.
Each month last winter saw above-average temperatures, with temperatures in January averaging 10 degrees above normal. Despite this warming, in February the mountain reached an all-time record low of minus 47.0 degrees. The wind chill dropped to -108 degrees below zero on February 4, which many experts said was likely the lowest since meteorologists began counting wind chills.
By the time summer began, rainfall was setting records. This summer was the wettest on record on Mount Washington. The 48.3 inches of rainfall exceeded the 30-year normal by 23.15 inches. It was also the snowiest June in 91 years of record keeping.
Tarasewicz said the mountain will experience periods of “impressive” snowfall, then temperatures will suddenly rise above freezing for a few days and rain will begin to fall, causing some of the accumulated snow to melt.
These bouts of warmer or rainier than usual weather are becoming more intense in duration and magnitude, even amid the frigid temperatures that have already begun on the mountain, he said.
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