Climate Change and Extreme Weather: Tornado in Brooklyn Perhaps a Harbinger?

Brooklyn suffered a tornado yesterday. It’s not a unique weather phenomenon, but New York City hasn’t seen one, well, pretty much ever since records have been kept. The storm was so intense, even in Manhattan, that it seemed windows were going to break as the electrical discharges flashed and wind blew intensely against glass and brick.

New York’s subways were inundated, so much so that travel for most New Yorkers in the morning rush hour was impossible by usual routes. Office workers were streaming in to work on foot and by the few train lines that were dry, hours after the usual work day began, soggy, sweaty, and tired.

The weather was extreme elsewhere along the East Coast as well, with temperatures in Baltimore and Washington soaring into the one-hundreds. In fact, this year has seen extreme weather worldwide, causing many to wonder whether the phenomenon is related to climate changes that scientists believe are certainly underway.

Jonathan, a blogger who focuses on environmental issues, wrote recently about the tendency to miss long-term changes in the human environment because, “humans are hard-wired to sense danger that occurs on much shorter time-scales. When change happens over years or decades, people tend to become accustomed to it.”

It might not be too early for us as a species to start thinking about the extremes we’ve been seeing as a pattern that fits predicted climate changes due to human carbon dioxide production— and to start understanding the need to address the issue as our most major priority.