Now a new report from the world's top climate scientists chalks much of it up to global warming - and predicts things are only going to get wilder.
Blizzards, monsoons, heat waves, wildfires, droughts, floods and cyclones are likely to grow fiercer and more numerous in the future, says the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The report, obtained by the Associated Press and AFP, says weather costs will rise and some locations may become “increasingly marginal as places to live."
The scientists said they were a 99% certain that temperature extremes will keep increasing and called it “likely" that peak temperatures will rise 5.4 degrees F by 2050, and 9 degrees F by 2100.
Three years in the making, the report comes in a year of unprecedented weather extremes and a record-breaking 10 multi-billion-dollar weather disasters, from February's mega-blizzard to Hurricane Irene to the record-smashing tornado swarms in Midwest and Southeast. Read the full report here.
Source: bY Helen Kennedy , New York Daily News.
