Whether you're from Michigan, Minnesota or somewhere close, you're familiar with those summertime stretches of hot, stagnant, polluted air that are relieved by a storm and passage of a refreshing cool front. This research suggests the fronts may be less frequent as a result of climate change.
It's an ominous scenario. But very few in the general public think of climate change as something relevant to their lives. There's much more thinking about a supposed Social Security shortfall 40 years from now than a climate shortfall 40 years from now. Is it the environmental movement's fault? Or whose?
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050219/us_nm/environment_warming_dc_2
Global warming could stifle cleansing summer winds across parts of the northern United States over the next 50 years and worsen air pollution, U.S. researchers said on Saturday.
Further warming of the atmosphere, as is happening now, would block cold fronts bringing cooler, cleaner air from Canada and allow stagnant air and ozone pollution to build up over cities in the Northeast and Midwest, they predicted.
"The air just cooks," said Loretta Mickley of Harvard University's Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences. "The pollution accumulates, accumulates,
accumulates, until a cold front comes in and the winds sweep it away."