"According to Professor Ian Simmonds of the University of Melbourne, it is a combination of the melting sea ice and the atmospheric warming that is happening globally that is responsible for the high rate of warming in the Arctic."
"KANSAS CITY, Mo. — An unrelenting and record-setting heat wave peaked this weekend, beating a broad swath of states into sweaty submission, with above-normal triple-digit temperatures stretching from St. Louis to Washington."
"The June 29 derecho, which caused widespread damage in Washington, D.C. blossomed to full fury in a record hot environment. Could the heat added to the atmosphere from manmade greenhouse gases have provided extra fuel to this explosive storm?
The amount of energy available to this storm was extreme and, wundergound weather historian Chris Burt called the number of all-time heat records set around the time 'especially extraordinary.'
"More than 2,000 temperature records have been matched or broken in the past week as a brutal heat wave baked much of the United States, and June saw more than 3,200 records topped, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Monday."
"The historic Texas drought caused the Ogallala Aquifer to experience its largest decline in 25 years across a large swath of the Texas Panhandle, new numbers from a water district show."
"HARTFORD CITY, Ind. -- Across a wide stretch of the Midwest, sweltering temperatures and a lack of rain are threatening what had been expected to be the nation’s largest corn crop in generations."
"Reports of infants and children dying in this summer's early heat wave have been documented in locales ranging from Kansas to Tennessee. And experts fear that increasingly frequent spikes in extreme high temperatures might bring such unwelcome news more often in the years ahead."
"Lawmakers in North Carolina, which has a long Atlantic Ocean coastline and vast areas of low-lying land, voted on Tuesday to ignore studies predicting a rapid rise in sea level due to climate change and postpone planning for the consequences."
The bizarre weather of early summer in the US – from heatwave, wildfires, drought to freak storms – is just a sampling of what is to come for 2012 and a window to the future under climate change, scientists have said.
Scientists are wary of linking specific weather events to climate change, and this year's punishing heat and deadly thunder storms have been confined to the Americas. Europe, Asia and Africa haven't experienced severe weather this year – though they have in past years.
"Natural gas is causing angst and excitement in local communities across the country, but the rise of fracking will have an impact on an issue that affects everyone on the planet: climate change. Gas Planet, a special hour of radio, explores whether unconventional natural gas can help or hinder efforts to solve climate change."
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