Just How Bad Was 2010's Weather?

Jim DeRosa gives us a transcript from PRI of a segment of Steve Curwood's "Living on Earth" show in which Jeff Young cites interviews with meteorologists (including our own favorite Jeff Masters of Weather Underground) and other experts regarding the climate in 2010. Here's a sample:

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YOUNG: Jeff Masters has seen some pretty wild weather. As a hurricane hunter in the late '80s, he flew into the teeth of some of the biggest, baddest storms. Then he co-founded the internet forecasting site, Weather Underground. There he keeps track of extreme weather events. And Masters says 2010 is the most extreme yet.

MASTERS: In my 30 plus years of being a meteorologist I can't ever recall a year like this one as far as extreme weather events go, not only for U.S. but the world at large.

YOUNG: Countries covering one fifth of the planet's land saw record high heat. Drought altered the world's food trade. Floodwaters inundated parts of the U.S. and Asia with frequency that defied statistical expectations.

TRENBERTH: Isn't that interesting, we have a one in a thousand year event happening every few years nowadays.

YOUNG That's Kevin Trenberth, a meteorologist who leads the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

TRENBERTH: And so, it's the changes in extremes where we notice the climate change. Droughts and floods and heat waves that are outside the bounds of what we'd normally expect. The global warming component is rearing its head in that way.

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Read (or listen to) the rest. Unsurprisingly, the news is not good.