The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet

by Heidi Cullen

Book Overview

From Heidi Cullen, one of America's foremost experts on weather and climate change and a senior research scientist with Climate Central, comes The Weather of the Future , a fascinating and provocative book that predicts what different parts of the world will look like in the year 2050 if current levels of carbon emissions are maintained.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061726885
• ISBN13: 9780061726880
• Release Date: August 2010
• Publisher: Harper
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The Weather of the Future (Harper)

For a look at what the world may look like in the event that we do little or nothing to combat carbon emissions and greenhouse gases, comes "The Weather of the Future" (Harper) by meteorologist/climatologist, Heidi Cullen. Cullen, a research scientist at the non-profit outfit, Climate Central, (and former host of the Weather Channel's `Forecast Earth') describes in detail what is likely to occur at seven different hot-spot locations around the planet in the wake of elevated temperatures and rising waters. Using predictive modeling from a variety of accredited sources, Cullen describes what effects can be expected in areas from New York City (major hurricanes, rampant flooding) to Bangladesh (becoming a massive refugee state) to the farm regions of Central California (massive drought) as well as the implications for Australia's Great Barrier Reef, Greenland's arctic ice cap and others. Using data models from NASA, the IPCC, MIT, the California Climate Change Center and others, Cullen predicts a seismic shift in global weather patterns, sea life, agriculture and terrain that, while may be off in some meaningful ways (as expected in a 50 year prediction) certainly cover the range of detailed possibilities awaiting our future. Her personal, yet readable account, is of course, speculative in nature, but with all the research and modeling referenced here and elsewhere, it's hard not to believe that somewhere in these patterns lies our own inconvenient truth.

Understanding Climate Science

Cullen's book is a good review of climatological information. For me, it fills in the blanks of my knowledge on the subject. Right from the beginning, she establishes a perspective that's missing from the generally available information. She begins with the history of climate science, nicely describing in chronological order, the individuals who made the early breakthroughs that bring us to our moment, with our much more sophisticated multi-model, super-computer averaged, long term climate forecasts. She explains clearly the relationship of the earth's natural greenhouse gasses, including water vapor, methane, and the pivotal role of carbon dioxide, as the geo-historic regulator gas, which has directly effected the planet's temperature. In fact, like many other scientists, she points out, without irony, how modern society continues to relentlessly release these very gasses...through the burning of oil, coal, and natural gas. Gases, which took nature thousands of years to sequester...modern society releases in little more than a century. Thus our "forcings" are unwittingly reestablishing the same conditions of an earlier greenhouse earth...a much warmer place than today. Of particular interest to me, is her explication of the contribution of Charles Keeling of Caltech, who single handedly had the insight to build the first instruments to measure accurately the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Keeling began his work in 1958, when he measured carbon dioxide at 315 ppm. Since, his work has closely described, with exquisitely sensitive data, a rise to 385 ppm by 2008. This is the highest carbon dioxide level in 800,000 years. This book is also clear about the human reasons, why global warming is so low in the public's perception of what constitutes a crisis. Cullen, as a highly qualified, media savvy educator, with a PHD in climate science...having had her own show on the Weather Channel...describes very wisely and calmly, I think, how humans seem to be hard-wired, only for much more immanent crises...in some wonderfully insightful pages on human psychology. Like most voices in the climate science community, Cullen is what her opponents call an "alarmist". In fact, climatologists like Cullen, ARE alarmed by the science they see becoming more and more powerful, just as our weather becomes more and more extreme. This, she demonstrates in the heart of her thesis, focusing in detail upon weather prognostications, in six world regions. This is not joyful reading. If you are a reader who dislikes such talk, then this book is not for you. But if you are one, who is willing to listen to the best of what climate science offers, Cullen should be on the top of your list.

Climate change is here to stay

It's a wonder to hear some people (many of them right-wing politicians) still denying that there is any change in the world's climate. In her new book, "The Weather of the Future", Heidi Cullen sets forth not necessarily to refute their positions but to give credence, backed up by fact, that indeed the world is a different place than it was even twenty years ago...and not a place for the better. While much of the author's presentation is in the form of a dry narrative, she does lay out the case for the causes and effects of how our world is beginning to take on new burdens of heat, melting glaciers, CO2 emissions and the like. If you can get past Cullen's initial chapters (presented as they might be in a college lecture) her remaining chapters shine. The author is particularly good at creating climate-related scenarios down the road that might occur in places like Africa, Bangladesh, the Arctic and New York. And some of these scenarios are pretty scary. Heidi Cullen presents a comprehensive look at where we stand today with regard to climate and where we are headed. It is an important book and one that I highly recommend.

It's already too hot and getting even hotter- What Global Warming will mean to Humanity in the decad

Heidi Cullen is perhaps the most well- known climatologist in America. She has in the past taken to task those weather broadcasters who have no real scientific knowledge of more long- range climate patterns. In this book she makes a valiant educational effort to teach the wider public the more long- range consquences of continued global warming. She chooses seven different areas of the world and projects dramatic scenarios for midcentury which will come as result of failure to curb our appetite for fossil fuels. Drought in central California, flooding in Bangladesh which makes millions homeless, New York infrastructure under water are among these. Cullen makes vivid the disastrous storms, floods, droughts, which are headed humanity's way. She also suggests that climate- changes will be a source of more intense political and military conflict. She argues that most of us associate global- warming with the melting of the ice- cap only and do not connect this with the everyday weather we are experiencing. I can only say that one of my major reasons for interest in this book is the weather I have been experiencing over the past two weeks ( Late July Early August 2010) in Jerusalem Israel. In my thirty- five years here I have never seen or felt anything like it. The sheer discomfort alone is I believe reason enough to be alarmed at what is happening. My own small personal experience aside. This book will give its readers a good overall understanding of one of the most urgent problems facing humanity today.