Global climate change sending wasps to Arctic

[capt_buzzard]

IS global warming sending the world's weather spiralling out of control?

There is no straightforward answer, because each extreme event on its own is meaningless, after all,we have had catastrophic storms, floods, droughts, cold and snow since time immemorial.

But when we add up all these stories they fit like jigsaw pieces into a bigger picture, and show that climate change is indeed taking a grip on the planet's weather.

So, although the storms of recent weeks do not on their own part prove climate change has taken hold in Britain & Ireland, they fit a pattern and indicate that climate experts predictions are becoming true.

Our winters are milder and wetter, with rainfall coming in heavier downpours, and we may be turning much stormier as well.

Across the world the weather is growing wild, extreme and very unpredictable.

The Canadian Arctic is now so warm that Inuit were amazed to find a wasp this summer, they had never seen one and had to be warned how to handle it, and the Arctic ice is melting so fast that within 30 years it may be possible for ships to sail across the north of Canada and Russia, it has already been nicknamed the "Panama Canal North"

The Alps are defrosting and crumbling as their permanently frozen ice-caps melt, causing serious rock falls, and Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya is expected to lose its snow-cap within 10 years because it is melting so fast.

Whole regions of climate are changing. In 2003, Europe got a taste of the Sahara Desert, quite literally, when its heatbelt shifted north, creating the worst European heatwave in history, killing thousands of people, while in the Sahara itself freak rains appeared as the tropical rainbelt from the south shifted northwards.

Large areas of Australia are threatened by wildfires as they suffer crippling heatwaves and drought.

But the world is getting wetter as it gets warmer, because more water is evaporating from the oceans, and flood disasters appear to have increased each decade since the 1960s

As sea levels rise and storms more intense, many beaches are being swept away.