Since I’ve been in this class, I’ve undoubtedly become more aware of the weather around me and climate change as a whole. So when I continued to notice the abnormally warm weather we’ve been experiencing in Eugene this winter, I decided to look into it in hopes of finding some answers. Upon my research, I initially came across some interesting statistics pertaining to the lack of snowfall and overall dryness the city of Eugene has been experiencing, but I didn’t seem to find any explanations.
It was after a little bit more research that I came across a wonderful article that seemed to be almost exactly what I was looking for. The article was from a website called livescience.com, and was titled Unusually Warm Winter, But Is It Climate Change? The article talks about how even though scientists cannot pin one single event on climate change, the reoccurring weather patterns can aid them in figuring out just how big of a role climate change is playing.
The article also proposes numerous possible explanations for the earth’s overall increasing warmth, such as global warming and changes in the polar jet stream. After finishing this article I realize that the information presented is on a much greater scale than I had anticipated, but I know this information can still be related to the weather changes that are happening here specifically in Eugene.
I still have many more questions about climate change and this sudden increase in warm weather, but these articles have definitely given me some answers and have been helpful in my understanding of why these changes are happening.
http://www.livescience.com/18868-mild-winter-climate-change.html
Thanks for posting this interesting, and informative, article. This quote from the article especially stood out to me:
“When attempting to describe how they think global climate change will affect weather, climate scientists tend to use metaphors along the lines of playing with a loaded dice or a baseball player on steroids. Both describe a shift in the overall results, a shift toward more extreme weather and warmer temperatures.”
It seems interesting to me that scientists rely on metaphors (a type of figurative language and technique used by literary writers) in order to communicate the complexity of the climate system and its connection to the weather. This is not to suggest that the scientists are misleading or that metaphors can’t also be factually correct, rather to suggest that powerful metaphors can often be incredibly helpful for climate change communication, and specifically for helping people understand the difference between climate and weather.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Mr. Siperstein! That’s a really interesting way of looking at the article, I myself didn’t even make that connection. I think you’re completely right in saying that scientists’ use of metaphors just further demonstrates how helpful different forms of figurative language can be when explaining the issue of climate change.