Warming (Phoenix, Tucson, Surprise: to live, assessment, rated)

[rksrl]

Does anyone know of any articles,studies,opinions of how global warming would affect Phoenix in particular,Arizona in general?
I am not looking for an arguement just information about the Phoenix area if global warming happens.
Some opinions I have seen[do not remember where]project some places would benefit,maybe Phoenix would?

[exit2lef]

A gloomy assessment from the often pessimistic Jana Bommersbach:

http://janabommersbach.com/pm-fea-feb06.htm (broken link)

Personally, I think there will be good and bad effects. Summers will continue to get hotter, although a lot of that will be due to paving the desert rather than global warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions. On the other hand, global warming is predicted to cause less predictable, more storm-prone weather. That will be bad for coastal cities, but may benefit us here in Arizona. Often weather systems that are disruptive when they first hit the coast become more mellow and bring needed rainfall to the desert when they arrive here.

In addition, if coastal cities become unliveable due to global warming, it may motivate migration from the coasts to interior cities such as Phoenix. Searing heat may be preferable to flooding on the coasts. On the other hand, migration to Phoenix from the Midwest may slow down if temperatures are milder there. The overall growth rate may not change, but there may be differences in where the new populations are coming from.

[SOON2BNSURPRISE]

Don't worry because in about 50 years the people that were talking about the coming ice age will be back. Seems that we always go from ice age to global warming about every 50 years or so. I think that everyone can believe as they want and that is fine. I just don't think the science is there yet to determine that we are having a major problem. There is a lot of bad science out there though and a lot of willing participants in that arena. The earth has warmed up some. I think it was a couple of degrees during the past 50 year time frame. I could be wrong, and am sure that there are those that will nail me for the facts.

[Magnum Mike]

Global climate changes are normal and they're not caused by man, or at least mankind should not blamed for "global warming" as much as Al Gore and other environmentalists would like you to believe. The earth has seen dramatic global climate changes throughout the ages, and long before man-made greenhouse gases were noted for causing global warming, and this global warming period is another one of those. The earth rotates around the sun in an imperfect axis that varies over a period of given time, and at some points, it'll get closer to the sun, which explains the changes in weather patterns we've seen. We'll start seeing a global cooling cycle sometime in the next 20-30 years.

[wit-nit]

There's Al Gore and the scary theory and then there's the mother nature plan. We've been in global warming since the end of the Ice Age millions of years ago. Earth went from constant below freezing to our current warming trend and eventually it will increase as we get closer and closer to the sun, then poof all gone.
And if you study the plan (check the many scientific web sites) in another 100 million or so years earth will burn up and and we'll all cease to exist. Hopefully you all won't worry too much about the ending.

[collected_eve]

Originally Posted by SOON2BNSURPRISE

Don't worry because in about 50 years the people that were talking about the coming ice age will be back. Seems that we always go from ice age to global warming about every 50 years or so.

If global warming gets more extreme & the ice caps melt & all that, then it's likely that this will cause another ice age.

And I think that man does most certainly have an effect on the environment. Imagine how bad our lifestyle is for the atmosphere, but at the same time we've made it hard to live without all these harmful luxuries.

[mortimer]

nitram said:

> We've been in global warming since the end of the Ice Age millions
> of years ago.

The last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago. There have been many ice ages in the past million years.

Global warming claims that the earth is increasing in temperatures by a few degrees a century. However, as other posters have noted the heat island effect is much more of a factor in Phoenix.

Since global warming is an average increase in temperatures, Phoenix might end up experiencing cooler weather since weather patterns will cause some areas to heat up more than the average and some areas to heat up less.

From about 1300 to about 1800 the world was in the grip of what is referred to the Little Ice Age (google it). Much of the hysteria about receding glaciers comes from the melting that is still going on as the world comes out of that uncharacteristic cooler period. Note that this period corresponds to the time when the Anasazi people abandoned their cliff dwellings en masse for unknown reasons (probably climate change). Also note that the SUV had not been invented at that time.

In Phoenix, we are not much effected by weather systems as you see in the Midwest and coastal areas. You can see this in the graph of the average temperatures for Phoenix (and Tucson, Albuquerque, etc) where the hottest day of the year corresponds to the longest day of the year (summer Solstice) and vice-versa for the coolest day of the year (winter Solstice).

Therefore any instability due to warming is not likely to effect Phoenix as much as other areas that regularly have fronts sweeping through.

As other posters have noted the Earth has heated up and cooled down repeatedly through the millenia.

[wit-nit]

When have Ice Ages occurred?

Many glacial advances and retreats have occurred during the last billion years of Earth history. These glaciations are not randomly distributed in time.Instead, they are concentrated into four time intervals. Large, important glaciations occurred during the late Proterozoic (between about800 and 600 million years ago), during the Pennsylvanian and Permian (between about 350 and 250 million years ago), and the late Neogene toQuaternary (the last 4 million years). Somewhat less extensive glaciations occurred during portions of the Ordovician and Silurian (between about 460 and 430 million years ago).

[mortimer]

What's that go to do with Phoenix?

[wit-nit]

Originally Posted by mortimer

What's that go to do with Phoenix?

Absolutely nothing...