Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Randy Cerveny, PhD (Tempe, AZ), is President’s Professor in Geographical Sciences specializing in weather and climate at Arizona State University. He is the author of the highly acclaimed Freaks of the Storm and has appeared on the Today show, ,em>CBS Morning Show, CNN, Good Morning America, ABC News, NPR, the BBC, and the Weather Channel. His work has been featured in People magazine, USA Today, National Geographic, the New York Times, Science, and Nature, among other publications.

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WEATHER'S GREATEST MYSTERIES SOLVED!

Prometheus Books

Contents

Chapter 1: What Is a Weather Mystery?.................................................9Chapter 2: The Mystery of the Dead T. Rex.............................................22Chapter 3: The Mystery of Humanity's "Near Extinction"................................33Chapter 4: The Mystery of the Saharan Hippos..........................................48Chapter 5: The Mystery of the Vanishing Harappans.....................................59Chapter 6: The Mystery of the Exodus..................................................76Chapter 7: The Mysteries of Weather and Climate in Ancient Greece.....................92Chapter 8: The Mystery of Petra, the Rose City........................................108Chapter 9: The Mystery of the Disappearing Sun........................................120Chapter 10: The Mystery of the Mayan Megadrought......................................131Chapter 11: The Mystery of Columbus's Missing Hurricane...............................143Chapter 12: The Mystery of the Little Ice Age's Lost Sunspots.........................151Chapter 13: The Mystery of the Complacent Empire's Wet Weather........................163Chapter 14: The Mystery of the Pacific Hot Tub........................................175Chapter 15: The Mystery of Tibet's Weather Spies......................................189Chapter 16: The Mystery of the Great American Dust Bowl...............................203Chapter 17: The Mystery of the Crashing Airplane and the A-Bomb.......................215Chapter 18: The Mystery of "Eliminating the Impossible"...............................226Chapter 19: The Mystery of the Devil in the Deep Blue Sea.............................235Chapter 20: The Mystery of Climate, Cocaine, and the Storyteller......................244Chapter 21: The Mystery of the Future.................................................252Chapter 22: The Seven Solutions.......................................................269Acknowledgments.......................................................................277Notes.................................................................................281Bibliography..........................................................................301Index.................................................................................315

Chapter One

Weather and climate have an impact on us every day of our lives. How unusual was the hurricane season of 2005? Do you need to wear a raincoat to work today? Will there be a heat wave-or a cold snap-this coming weekend? What would a drought in California do to this winter's food prices? Will your friend's spring wedding be rained out? What kind of weather will your children or grandchildren experience? These questions point out the strong influence of weather and climate on the multitude of activities that are a part of our daily lives. But with such an all-encompassing presence in our lives, what can be mysterious about weather and climate?

Time: Spring 2009 Location: New York City, New York, North America

Nine-year-old Toby dejectedly stared out at the miserable, dark clouds and watched them with growing dismay. Soaking rains continued to fall from the leaden skies. As he stared forlornly through the living room window, a growing cascade of wet rivulets spilled down the glass. In the background, he could faintly hear the cheery voice of a local newscaster on the TV.

"Drenching rain will continue all day today and Sunday so all of you with outdoor weekend plans will have to put them on hold for a while. It's going to be a wet weekend! Yes, definitely a good time to stay indoors by the fire with a good book. Traffic on the Long Island Expressway is particularly heavy as motorists negotiate over the water-filled roads-so let's all be careful out there! And now to Dan at the Sports Desk ..."

"Thanks, Ed. And, as we reported earlier, that rain you just mentioned has forced the cancellation of today's big Yankees game with the Red Sox ..."

Toby looked forlornly down at his brand-new baseball mitt, the one that he had hoped would catch the winning home run at today's game.

"Stupid old rain!" he muttered sadly.

A rumble of distant thunder laughed back at him.

After watching or reading the 24-7 reports from newspapers, television, Internet Web sites, or magazines, it would seem obvious that the natural environment around us has changed dramatically in the past few years. Coverage of hurricanes, floods, droughts, and the like has increased exponentially. There is always a weather-related natural disaster occurring somewhere in the world. The reporting of events like the horrible aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the terrible European heat wave of 2003, and the massive flooding and tornadoes in Iowa and Georgia during spring 2008 suggests that we live in a world fundamentally different from that of our grandparents or even our parents.

Yet is that really the case? The extraordinary people who are interested in asking-and answering-that kind of question are known as climatologists, that is, scientists who study the long-term aspects of weather. But how do climatologists differ from the guys or gals who stand in front of weather maps each night on television? Is "climate" really that different from "weather"? A favorite author of mine, Robert Heinlein, once proposed that "climate is what we expect, weather is what we get." These are unquestionably simple definitions, but they can be used as a foundation for our discussion.

At its core, climate may be defined as the "collections" or "groups" of different types of weather. Consequently, we can study climate through time such as "How is our weather changing over the past decade or century?" Or we can look at climate through study of a specific type of weather as, for example, "Are hurricanes becoming more intense or more frequent?" In short, "climate" is the general and "weather" is the specific. It is no accident that a substantial amount of the training needed to become a meteorologist-a weather scientist-is essentially the same training required for a career as a climatologist. Not surprisingly, a good climatologist is frequently also a good meteorologist.

Nevertheless, there are differences. In order to study the "general" of climate, we first need to study the "specific" of weather. Consequently, weather research-the study of the immediate atmosphere of today and the near future-is more advanced than the investigation of long-term weather patterns in our atmosphere, which is one of the central cores of climate research. We have been scientifically investigating weather slightly longer than we have been studying climate, perhaps by a hundred years or so. But both fields are young compared to other academic subjects.

This "newness" is real despite recent media attention on global warming and weather change that might give the impression that climatology and meteorology have been around for a long time. In fact, the vast majority of climatologists around the world have come from these other subjects, for example, atmospheric science, geographical science, physics, or geophysics. There aren't very many universities that currently offer degrees in climatology.

Each fall when I...