Timeline: Extreme Weather Events in 2012

On one of my periodic back-packing trips in France during the 1980s, I photographed Mont Blanc from the field near the Chamonix train station. Two decades later a friend photographed the same image from the same location and time of year. This time, it was no longer Mont Blanc but Mont Gris, with stone and soil in place of the glacier I had seen.

Of course weather changes every season, but there are noticeable and observable differences we see more and more often that are unusual, and directly attributable to a changing climate. I lead hikes in the Canadian Rockies, and the following are things I've actually seen in the course of the last twenty years.

- 95% of the glaciers in the Rockies have disappeared. I have photos of one in Jasper National Park that actually fell off the mountain! Since glaciers rely for their existence on a certain range of temperatures and precipitation maintained over a period of centuries, it is inarguable that the climate has changed.

- The growing season is getting longer, and as a result, plants once unknown in northern climates are moving farther and farther north.

- In the Canadian Rockies, mountain pine beetles (which are killed by long periods of cold weather) have moved into Alberta, wiping out huge areas of forest. Up until the 1990s, weeks of -40° temperatures (no longer happening) stopped then from spreading.

Living in Alberta, I'm always surprised when I see that the only people who aren't convinced by all the scientific evidence seem to either work in the tar sands or live in Texas.

Please change your policy to NOT allow anonymous posts. If someone is going to make any statement, they should say who they are and the source of their "facts".

I have researched posts by people claiming climate change is not being worsened by people, only to finds they were being funded by the oil industry and that their "evidence" was not endorsed by any serious scientific organization.

Posting anonymously is equal to trolling; and cannot be taken seriously.

Good timeline but you missed a lot. Particularly the astonishing record smashing ice melt/cyclone in the Arctic and also in Greenland where it was recorded that the entire surface was hotter than normal even at the most Northern station. North Korea drought and floods the worst in a century, South Korea the same, Japan deluges, Russia "tsunami wave" that rained 6 months worth of precipitation in 48 hours, Afghanistan/Pakistan floods, India lack of monsoon rains and now drought, etc.

a new time line for you.

here are some of the droughts in the last 2000 years,

over the last 2000 years in the US 100- 150 year droughts,

Africa- 16th century 100 year drought

Europe- 14th century, the worst drought in Europe ever.

16th century - the Rhine and Seine nearly run dry.

there again we only have to google for extreme weather events to know that weather events of the past were worse.

would it be possible to have a time line of disasters over the last 150 years as a comparison. so we can show how bad it is today.

Thursday 6 september we experienced widespread hail storms inland in South Africa , with hail several inches thick in certain areas . Luckily no serious damage as the stones were relatively small but the amount of hail was unusual especially for this time of the year.

Notice the use of 'since' for many instances of record readings. If the reading, whatever it may be, is equal to; slightly worse than; or just compared to a year before, etc, then saying so is meaningless. e.g. the June reading of 104'F exceeded 2011 reading of 102'F. This should not even rate a mention.

If it was part of a wider trend then that should be stated. Each and every day almost anywhere on earth has such variations. These are often breathlessly communicated by pretty weather girls on TV. People take it aboard as a cause for chatter over coffee. But that has happened for generations.

Finally, floods in Australia are quite common especially after a drought. Everyone who knows the history of Australia knows the cycle of long droughts followed by flooding rains. This is not a new phenomenon. But in 2000 Australians were told it would never, repeat...never, rain heavily again. he snow fell extra heavily in southern Australia this year. In 2000 ski operators were told snow would utterly disappear by now.

As a layman I am curious to know is it the first time that the earth is manifesting such an extreme climate?

Secondly are we going to face such extreme climate every year?

Is it reversible? It doesn't seem to me.

How the human species adjust to such extreme climate?

Try this for an insight - climate extremes are the norm and they are not exceptional. Moreover, some years or worse than others - this is because there is something called spatio-temporal serial correlation.

If the underlying implication here is that it is due to CO2, then this is nothing more than unscientific propaganda

Thanks for this timeline, which is very well done. I understand that you can't include every single extreme event, but one pretty significant omission is the heat wave & fires in Siberia, which have been far worse this year than in 2010, and have been getting almost no media coverage in the USA.