Increase in instability in the atmosphere happening now

[meteorologist]

http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2011/05/09/fire_and_rain_fed_scientists_point_to_wild_april/

[Clifford]

http://www.boston.co..._to_wild_april/

"It's very consistent with La Nina; maybe we've had more extremes," Halpert said. "It's a shift of the jet stream, providing all that moisture and shifting it away from the south, so you've seen a lot of drought in Texas."U.S. scientists also looked for the fingerprints of global warming and La Nina on last month's deadly tornadoes, but couldn't find evidence to blame those oft-cited weather phenomena.

NOAA research meteorologist Martin Hoerling tracked three major factors that go into tornadoes -- air instability, wind shear and water vapor -- and found no long-term trends that point to either climate change or La Nina. That doesn't mean those factors aren't to blame, but Hoerling couldn't show it, he said.

I wonder what the "Leading Scientists" were saying about the Dust Bowl during the 1930's.

[aslkahuna]

I wonder what the "Leading Scientists" were saying about the Dust Bowl during the 1930's.

Probably not much then since the ENSO and climate change weren't topics of discussion then. However, the Dust Bowl was a Drought situation very similar to what we have now but one exacerbated by very poor land use practices which put the Dust into Dust Bowl. Prior to then, periodic droughts were usually accompanied by wildfires which are a critical part of the ecology of savannah grasslands.

Steve