The summer of 2010 brought us some very dramatic weather extremes, from the monsoon flooding in Pakistan, and devastating mud slides in China, to the most intense heat wave and worst rash of forest fires that Russia has ever seen. Are these catastrophic events a sign that the impacts of climate change are already upon us? On this episode of Locus Focus host Barbara Bernstein talks with Oregon's State Climatologist, Phil Mote, about the significance of the historic floods and fires of the past summer, and what they portend for the future.
Since 2009 Philip Mote had been Oregon's State Climatologist and is the first director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University, where he is a professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences. Mote is a leading scientist on the impacts of climate change. His research into the effects of climate change on precipitation, temperature, snow pack and water resources led to his work on the 2007 fourth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He shared lead authorship of the snow and ice section of the report as well as the Nobel Prize it garnered. Prior to coming to Oregon, Mote was the Washington State climatologist, at the University of Washington in Seattle.
- KBOO