Weather Watch: Mother Nature is turning up the heat

The weather is becoming more extreme, we're told by scientists. But is it really?

This year, the United States has been hit by its deadliest single tornado in history and one of the worst outbreaks of twisters ever.

England had summer heat as early as April. Australia was hit by a monster Category 5 cyclone, while Canberra received its earliest frosts in almost 40 years. New Zealand has had numerous ex-cyclones and floods, yet record-breaking heat hit our West Coast around the same time. Typhoons have already begun in the Northern Hemisphere as our extended cyclone season comes to an end.

But are these extremes just part of the norm - which happen to be timed all at once? To measure the effects of climate change we need decades, not just a few months. But we can't ignore the fact that Earth is warming up.

Air temperature lifting a degree or two might not sound like much, but one just has to watch a Category 1 cyclone move over water that is a couple of degrees warmer and you can see how it explodes quickly into a Category 5 storm. A couple of degrees is a lot in climate terms. Think of being in a hot room and someone turns the heater up a couple of degrees - you will notice it.

Technology is also changing how we perceive nature. When we write updates on WeatherWatch's Facebook page we always get comments like, "What is happening to Mother Nature?" Well, in this day of Twitter and YouTube we not only hear about more natural disasters from all over the world but we can also see them instantly. An earthquake in a remote nation can now be the lead story on television news.

Weather radar is also getting better; it's detecting more storms than ever, including many that occur over sea or unpopulated land.

Also, the world's population is growing - meaning there are more people to be affected by nature's extremes.

No matter what the reasons are, the weather will continue to become more important to all of us as the Earth continues to heat up.