Trust forecasters for truth of climate change

Kudos to The Gazette for the Sept. 11 front-page article, “Extreme Iowa weather could be new normal.” It was a thorough and sobering account of understanding that what Iowa has experienced in the last few years is not something over and done with. It is something that farmers and others will have to factor into our plans of how to adapt to our changing climate.

I am hopeful now that the American Meteorological Society has issued a new statement on climate change that our local weather forecasters will draw connections between weather and climate when appropriate rather than treating extreme weather as an isolated event.

Here is a quote from the updated AMS statement:

“There is unequivocal evidence that Earth's lower atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming; sea level is rising; and snow cover, mountain glaciers, and Arctic sea ice are shrinking. The dominant cause of the warming since the 1950s is human activities …. The observed warming will be irreversible for many years into the future, and even larger temperature increases will occur as greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere. Avoiding this future warming will require a large and rapid reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions …”

We the people rely on our weather forecasters for the truth about the weather; we hope we can also look to them for the truth about our climate.

Barbara Schlachter

Iowa City