# Is the weather around the world getting more volatile?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-weather-around-the-world-getting-more-volatile/762582>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [August 12, 2016, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-weather-around-the-world-getting-more-volatile/762582 "2016-08-12T18:07:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Jackknifed\_Juggernaut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de053/32.png) [@Jackknifed\_Juggernaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackknifed_Juggernaut)\
**Post date:** [August 12, 2016, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-weather-around-the-world-getting-more-volatile/762582/1 "2016-08-12T18:07:21Z")

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I’m not sure if there is a factual answer to this one, so I put it in IMHO.

While I know that there is a huge amount of evidence that the globe is getting warmer, I also believe that the weather is getting more volatile, i.e. more extreme temperatures - low and high, more storms, floods, etc. However, I’m not sure if the reason I believe this is due to other factors such as my limited time on earth, the availability of news from around the world, other psychological reasons (recency bias, aging, etc.), [Weather.com](http://Weather.com) making it seem like the world is about to end every day, etc.

Is weather volatility measured, and is there enough historical data to prove that it is?

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**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\
**Post date:** [August 12, 2016, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-weather-around-the-world-getting-more-volatile/762582/2 "2016-08-12T21:04:25Z")

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From the looks of things it is. I can’t find an article\* directly\* on it that isn’t obviously partisan, although [articles that are not focused solely on the subject](http://seekingalpha.com/article/1149861-climates-volatile-index-is-off-the-charts-a-look-at-commodities) seem to take it as a given.

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**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2016, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-weather-around-the-world-getting-more-volatile/762582/3 "2016-08-13T02:11:28Z")

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Could be the advent of the 24-hour news cycle demanding fresh “news” events every second means even the slightest downpour anywhere gets national coverage. That and the fact everyone with a smart phone is capturing even the slightest downpour and then posting it to the web instantly (also feeding the 24-hour beast). It’s hard to tell how much weather “news” is truly out of the ordinary these days, what, with [Weather.com](http://Weather.com) actually naming thunderstorms, and Al Roker breathlessly alerting people that it’s going to rain hard in their area.

That said, it does seem the severity of winter storms that literally lock-down parts of the northeast for days at a time is becoming more common, as well as the frequency of “100-year” storms and floods elsewhere. Maybe the growth of population and the spread of suburbia into heretofore natural or rural areas makes it seem like people’s lives are disrupted more often by the weather than before. I dunno.

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**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2016, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-weather-around-the-world-getting-more-volatile/762582/4 "2016-08-13T06:05:35Z")

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I thought it was well known that higher temperatures of the ocean surface lead to more extreme weather. About a year ago there were threads pointing to interesting YouTubes explaining why higher temperatures even have the paradoxical effect of causing freak cold-weather events in temperate latitudes.

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**Author:** ![Esox\_Lucius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Esox\_Lucius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esox_Lucius)\
**Post date:** [August 14, 2016, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-weather-around-the-world-getting-more-volatile/762582/5 "2016-08-14T02:51:31Z")

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And there’s more water in the world now from the melting glaciers which is supposed to mean more rain overall and more severe storms.