In his bestselling book on climate change, Hot Flat and Crowded, Tom Friedman includes a chapter on what he refers to as “global weirding”. What he is referring to with this phrase is “increased variability” in the climate, as opposed to a uniform, linear increase in temperature that many have come to expect as the earth’s average daily temperature increases.

This is because the laws of nature do not behave in ways that are wholly predictable. Have you heard of the butterfly effect? Or chaos theory? Or the idea of logarithmic feedback loops?  There are so many factors interacting with each other to create the experience of a snowstorm, or a drought, or a flood, or a hurricane, that it becomes increasingly difficult to predict exactly how or when climate change will show up in our day or our year or even in this century. What we do know is that we should expect the unexpected.

That means that a typical fall may be followed by daffodils in January, followed by a typical spring and a summer that is much colder than usual, and then the complete absence of fall and then a winter with record low temperatures and blizzards. In other words, all sort of extremes with a lack of predictability built-in.

This is why our weather reporters have been so rarely on the mark this last year or two. The carefully built predictive meteorology models that scientists have traditionally used to tell us what to expect the next day or next week are falling apart in the face of this “increased variability”.

I’m a sailor, and I can tell you that the difficulty in predicting the future weather had big implications for me when I took our family sailboat out this last August for a month-long trip along the north shore of Lake Ontario. A lighting storm that hit the lake on August 9 was not predicted, inspiring an article in the Toronto Star about “meteorologist-bashing” that pointed out that the public was getting increasingly irate with inexact predictions. For my part, I was stranded on my boat that night outside a harbour with a badly marked channel. Had I known about the lightning storm I would not have been on the lake. On the other hand, if I were to not set out at all every time the forecast said there was a “chance of thundershowers”, I would not have set out on my boat at all.

When our friends and neighbors who are skeptical about global warming, pointing out that the current summer has never been colder or that the current winter has never been as severe,  you can lean towards them and say “climate change means increased variability” with a knowing look.

What does all this mean for us in our daily lives? It means that we should stay flexible and low-to-the-ground when it comes to planning our gardens, our outdoor activities, our wardrobes, our home renovations.  Be ready for anything, expect the unexpected, and then you can enjoy the beauty an intense lightning stormin the summer or a long hike on a mild winter Saturday.

A lightning bolt strikes over Highway 404 South as a major thunderstorm rolls through the GTA Aug. 9, 2009, as seen from the Finch Ave. overpass. ADRIEN VECZAN/TORONTO STAR

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