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AS anyone who works in a museum knows, art conservators can be slow to embrace change. But for Sarah Staniforth, director of historic properties at the National Trust in Britain, the eye opener came last September, as she contemplated photographs of a torrential downpour that had just invaded the billiard room of Cragside, one of the trust’s Victorian house museums.

Since 2000 catastrophic rainstorms have become so prevalent in England that the trust has gradually retrained its emergency teams to cope with floods, in addition to its time-honored enemy, house fires. Yet at Cragside, as with all of the trust’s 300-plus historic house museums, employees still use a standard British mid-20th-century conservation method — chiefly an electric or hot water heating system that maintains constant humidity levels — to protect irreplaceable treasures, like its painting by J. M. W. Turner and its early Burroughes & Watts billiard table.

nd now, in the photographs Ms. Staniforth viewed in her office, Cragside’s carefully tended electric conservation heating system was standing in a pool of water. So were the 19th-century fire irons and ornate wrought-iron fireplace seating unit, which had both rusted, and the billiard table, whose legs would take several months to dry out. (The room finally reopened to the public in late February.) “That photograph made me feel that we had just been fiddling while Rome burned — or, rather, flooded,” Ms. Staniforth said. “It made me see how important it is to get your priorities right, and not to worry exclusively about the humidity when your house can fill up with water as a result of climate change.”

New Weather Patterns Threaten U.S. Breadbasket

The Midwest climate has already become wetter and warmer, said Gene Takle, an atmospheric scientist at Iowa State University.

One of Takle's studies used Iowa's experience to show the stress already showing up in the Midwest states, which are major food exporters to other countries as well. For example, precipitation has risen gradually in Iowa over the past century, but can vary widely from year to year. Springs now are wetter, and autumns drier. That can make corn-planting difficult, but dry the grain more quickly in the fall. Records show a rise in absolute humidity, threatening crops with a higher risk of disease and harmful fungi.

This study evaluated the association between temperature variation and emergency admissions for stroke in Brisbane, Australia, over a 10-year period. For people under age 65, the risk of primary intracerebral hemorrhage in summer rose significantly-15% and 12%, respectively-for 1°C (1.8°F) increases in daily high and low temperature, after controlling for potential confounding effects of humidity and air pollutants.

The GCC region is undergoing a heat wave that is hospitalising labourers, breaking down electricity substations and pushing power stations to the limit, experts and officials from across the region say. ¡°It¡¯s a heat wave, it¡¯s unexpected, we are having extreme temperatures for this time of year,¡± said Essa Ramadan, the senior meteorologist at the Kuwait Meteorological Department. In Kuwait, ¡°it¡¯s seven to eight degrees [Celsius] above average¡±.

The highest temperature ever recorded at Kuwait International Airport since it started taking measurements in 1957 was 51.3¢ªC in August 1998. Even though June is usually a cooler month, that temperature was matched this week. Weather stations in other areas of the country recorded temperatures as high as 54¢ªC.

Mr Ramadan blames the high temperatures on global warming, which he said is changing the Earth¡¯s weather systems and has led to an average annual rise of between 0.5¢ªC and 0.8¢ªC in Kuwait over the last 53 years. He said Kuwait, the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, the south of Iraq and west Iran are being hit the hardest.

Qatar's longest day in the year was also the hottest with experts agreeing that the unusually high temperatures experienced in Qatar and the Gulf region over the last five days indicate a significant shift in weather patterns. The temperatures recorded this year are 5-7 degrees Celsius higher than in the corresponding period last year, Qatari daily The Peninsula said. Maximum temperatures on June 18, 19 and 20, last year, were 44, 43 and 42 degrees Celsius respectively. However, this year, all the three days recorded a high of 49C. There was also a major shift in the minimum temperature recorded during the same period.

The weather should not have been so hot this month. But we have been receiving warm and humid south-westerly winds for the last four days [thus forcing temperatures up]. Normally, we receive this wind during the peak of summer," the official was quoted as saying.

Record high temepratures in Bahrain have forced several construction companies take the humanitarian decision of resting their labourers in the afternoon.

Speaking at the Asean Energy Business Forum Ministers-CEO Dialogue in Vietnam last Friday, Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras said the need to “climate-proof” the region’s energy sector was now more pressing, given the visible impact of climate change on various aspects of energy production.

He explained that the energy sector was very vulnerable to the effects of climate change, using as an example the Philippines’ experience during the extended El Niño weather phenomenon. Mindanao experienced daily rotating power interruptions, sometimes lasting 10-12 straight hours, due to severe lack of water to power the main grid’s hydropower facilities, from which the bulk of the region’s power supply came.

Apart from hydropower generation, Almendras related that wind power generation was also highly affected by climate change. “Wind power generation is susceptible to variations in ambient temperatures, humidity, and precipitation. The primary determinants of wind power availability are wind speed statistics, consisting of mean wind speeds and gustiness. Wind speeds are subject to natural variability on a wide range of time scales, and they may be affected by climate change,” he explained. To help respond to the effects of climate change, he said the country had adopted a holistic approach of combining mitigation with adaptation.

The 2009 State of the Climate report released today draws on data for 10 key climate indicators that all point to the same finding: the scientific evidence that our world is warming is unmistakable. More than 300 scientists from 160 research groups in 48 countries contributed to the report, which confirms that the past decade was the warmest on record and that the Earth has been growing warmer over the last 50 years. Based on comprehensive data from multiple sources, the report defines 10 measurable planet-wide features used to gauge global temperature changes. The relative movement of each of these indicators proves consistent with a warming world. Seven indicators are rising: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, air temperature over oceans, sea level, ocean heat, humidity and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface. Three indicators are declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern hemisphere.

“For the first time, and in a single compelling comparison, the analysis brings together multiple observational records from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “The records come from many institutions worldwide. They use data collected from diverse sources, including satellites, weather balloons, weather stations, ships, buoys and field surveys. These independently produced lines of evidence all point to the same conclusion: our planet is warming,”

As she did for winter 2010, this summer Mother Nature has truly outdone herself, this time by brewing up a miserable combination of heat and humidity that has enveloped not only the northeastern U.S., but much of the Northern Hemisphere as well. As Ian Livingston reported on Saturday, July was the warmest single calendar month of all time in Washington (tied with July 1993). The warmest day in the city was July 7th, when the temperature soared to 102 degrees Fahrenheit at Reagan National Airport. The day before, the temperature rose to a sweltering 105 F at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. In total, Washingtonians sweated through 21 July days during which temperatures exceeded 90 degrees. Baltimore set a new record for the average daily high temperature, which was 92.5 degrees, beating July 1988's 91.9 degrees. New York City and Philadelphia experienced their second-warmest months since records began in the late 1800s. New York recorded an average monthly temperature of 81.3 degrees, which was 4.8 degrees above the July average. The warmest July on record there occurred in 1999, when the average temperature was 81.4 degrees.

Although long-term global climate change doesn't directly cause a particular heat wave, the pronounced warming trend in global average temperatures during the past century has increased the odds of more frequent and severe heat waves. For example, scientists have partially attributed the deadly 2003 European heat wave, which killed tens of thousands, to manmade climate change.

Russia Heat Wave Statistics Staggers the Imagination

IT IS AS IF THE RUSSIAN HEARTLAND SHIFTED ONE THOUSAND MILES SOUTH That the month of July 2010 was hot in Moscow could rank among the foremost understatements in the world of "weather speak." For one thing, the highest temperature on record (in roughly 130 years of Moscow weather records) was reached on July 29, this being 38.2 C, or 100.8 F. This broke the previous high mark of 37.5 C set only three days earlier, on July 26. This was nearly tied on July 28. All of this is extraordinary, given that the normal high for this, the hottest time of year, is only 23 C. Moreover, July 2010 was the hottest July in the climate record of Moscow, as well as the hottest month overall. Thanks to Loepa, writing from Brasil (of all places!), I have it that the old record for warmest month in Moscow was 23.3 C, or 73.9 F, versus normal of about 17 C, or 63 C. What about this July? How about 26.1 C, or 79.0 F. So that is nearly a 3 C (and more than 5 F) gap. It is as if Moscow were shifted a thousand miles to the south. For perspective, the normal average temperature of July in Washington, D.C., is 26.2 C, or 79.2 F, according to the ADC database. Moscow has thus experienced roughly the weather (less the usual steamy humidity and thunderstorms) that is normally expected in the city of Washington, D.C., which lies 1,890 km/1,170 miles nearer to the equator! ST. PETERSBURG HAS ALSO ENDURED EXTREME TEMPERATURES I do not have full climate records for St. Petersburg, but I do know about July 2010. The AccuWeather.Com database shows a monthly mean temperature of 24.2 C, or 75.5 F. Normal mean July temperature is 15.2 C, or 59.4 F. Yes, that is even higher above normal than was Moscow. The city of Indianapolis has a normal mean July temperature of 24.2 C. Yet Indianapolis is 2,250 km/1,400 miles nearer to the equator than St. Petersburg. I do not say that this is a rigorous "apples-to-apples" comparison. Rather, it is to get a rough idea of how skewed the weather has been this summer in the Russian heartland. AND IT IS NOT OVER YET... As of this writing, the highest temperature thus far on Wednesday, Aug. 4, is 36.6 C, or 98 F, in Moscow. St. Petersburg has reached 33.3 C, or 92 F. Searing heat has invaded eastern Belarus, where readings to 37 C or 38 C have been reached. In the Ukraine, the worst of the heat has backed westward to Kiev, where August 4 has become the hottest day (37 C to 38 C, or near 100 F) of the summer thus far. And near 40 C yet again in Luhansk. The GFS numerical forecast model shows widespread extreme high temperature departure, for at least another week, throughout European Russia along with stretches of her western neighbors.