Both the Los Angeles Times and the (Portland) Oregonian ran stories today about the conclusion of a new study relating the increase of stormy weather to the pollutants put out by countries in the Far East such as India and China.
The study, from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says that the pollutants probably significantly alter the makeup of the deep convective clouds that affect the weather here in the northwest every winter.
The Oregonian story, by Richard L. Hill, offers a view that the increasing storminess of northwest winters now may not be directly attributable to the pollution, and refer to something called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, in which the weather flips between wet/cool and dry/warm every generation or so. The Los Angelest Times article, by Robert Lee Hotz, offers some general background information and cites some examples from the west coast how the pollution may indeed be playing a large part.
The bottom line from both articles is that more studies need to be done (of course), and I am left to think that breathing in some of the crap from the dirty crowded areas in Asia is an unappealing prospect. But then again, one thinks of things such as Mount Saint Helens and how little of the ash made its way down the valley, and the poor folks who lived east of the volcano suffered the most from that. The bottom line is that this is another example of how interconnected the entire world is nowadays.
OREGONIAN STORY
LA TIMES STORY
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