Extreme weather and climate change

Hour 1

We’re in the midst of the worst drought in 50 years. The last 12 months have been the hottest on record.  Heat waves, storms, floods and wildfires have been wreaking havoc this spring and summer in the United States and around the globe.  But can we chalk all this up to global warming?  Two new reports, one from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the other from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), say that extreme weather is definitely in our future and is caused by a heating planet. We’ll talk about the strange weather — what we can expect, how we can live with it and if we can turn the tide on global warming.  Our guests are MICHAEL LEMONICK, senior writer for Climate Central and lead author of a new book, “Global Weirdness: Severe Storms, Deadly Heat Waves, Relentless Drought, Rising Seas, and the Weather of the Future;” and CHRIS FIELD, founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology and co-chair on the IPCC Working Group 2 report, “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation.”

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[audio: 073012_100630.mp3]