'Carbon-loading is a climate steroid'

2012-11-02 12:25

Greenpeace activists perform above an underwater art museum in Cancún to draw attention to the risk for millions of people living in coastal areas. (Jason Taylor, Greenpeace, AP)

Cape Town - Human-induced climate change will make extreme weather events like Superstorm Sandy the norm and not the exception in the future, international conservation group WWF has warned.

Saying that loading Earth's atmosphere with carbon pollution was "like putting an athlete on steroids", the group urged people everywhere, "and especially our present and future leaders", to recognise that this storm was the latest sign that climate change was "a real and dangerous threat".

The storm was the latest example of a long line of unusual, extreme weather events around the world that were becoming more frequent or severe, the WWF noted.

"Atlantic hurricanes in the fall [autumn] are nothing new, but Sandy was energised by October sea surface temperatures that were among the warmest on record off the US mid-Atlantic coast. And its final westward track was influenced by high pressure patterns that a growing body of evidence links to record low sea ice in the Arctic."

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