CO2 smashing extreme weather records, page-60

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    Over the last 100 years or so not every locality is going to have seen a 1/100 year event. That is just the nature of statistics. Some places will have copped a few, some none. There is variability in the results. It's no different than if you roll the dice six times you do not get the exact distribution you expect from a dice in the long run. Or if you toss a coin twice you can't be guaranteed to get a head and a tail, though that would be the long run average outcome.

    And when you are talking about 1/100 year records you have to see many hundreds of years before that variability plays out to some statistical average level and every place can be expected to have almost certainly seen a 1/100 year event. It may seem counter-intuitive, but that's the reality of it.

    So that's why we still see new record cold events. We can expect that many places won't yet have had their first 1/100 cold event and so we continue to see those still happening.

    Similarly we can expect that we'll still be seeing 1/100 year hot events that aren't due to climate change, with that heat really just happening because of the occurrence of a rare natural variability event.

    But you expect that over time climate change will be skewing that. Instead of an equal number of high and low records, you start to see more high records and relatively fewer low. To my knowledge we are definitely seeing less cold than hot records. And I've posted data on that for the US fairly frequently. I think also for Aus, but not that I've posted for a while. But that is confirmed big time for Aus here:
    https://theconversation.com/sure-wi...cords-at-12-times-the-rate-of-cold-ones-35607

    Re no more snow, no more rain:
    Eventually, it'll get too warm for some/many places that have had snow historically to get snow. Even a rare cold event won't be cold enough. But that'll be many decades off for most places. And it'll depend on how much we minimise warming. In the shorter term we are seeing these bigger dumps because of the increased moisture in the atmosphere and it still being cold enough to snow, on a cold day, in most places where it has snowed in the past.
    But it will be a long long time before the top of the Himalayas don't have snow (if ever?). On the other hand, I have an interest in mountaineering and I know that the lower slopes of Everest, and the Khumbu glacier there, that is climbed through for most ascents, is regarded as much more unstable and the season for getting through there more safely is reducing. Because it is getting warmer and ice cliffs are melting and collapsing more often. Climbers and porters are getting up much earlier in the morning dark to get through there before the day warms up.
    Plus I think some people got carried away making OTT statements. Flannery brasses me off for having done so. And a few of Gore's comments also.

    Similar for rain. I think the considered view now is we expect more extremes both ways. Overall warmer temperatures make droughts worse when they happen. And a warmer, more moisture laden atmosphere makes heavy rainfall events worse when they happen.
 
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