CHRIS CUOMO (ABC NEWS) (Off-camera) All right, thank you, Sam. Now we will have a dramatic preview for you of an unprecedented ABC News event called earth 2100. We're asking you to help create a story that has yet to unfold. What our world will look like in 100 years if we don't save our troubled planet. Your reports will actually help form the backbone of a two-hour special airing this fall. ABC's Bob Woodruff will be the host, he joins us now, pleasure, Bob.
GRAPHICS: EARTH 2100
BOB WOODRUFF (ABC NEWS) (Off-camera) You too Chris. You know, this show is a countdown through the next century and shows what scientists say might very well happen if we do not change our current path. As part of the show today we are launching an interactive web game, which puts participants in the future and asks them to report back about what it is like to live in this future world. The first stop is the year 2015.
CLIP FROM "EARTH 2015"
UNIDENTIFIED MALE #1: The public is sleepwalking into the future. You know, sort of going through the motions of daily life and really not paying attention.
JAMES HANSEN (NASA/AL GORE SCIENCE ADVISOR): We can see what the prospects are and we can see that we could solve the problem but we're not doing it.
[Graphic: Welcome to 2015]
PETER GLEICK (SCIENTIST/PACIFIC INSTITUTE): In 2015, we've still failed to address the climate problem.
JOHN HOLDREN (PROFESSOR/HARVARD UNIVERSITY): We're going to see more floods, more droughts, more wildfires.
Trend for large and extreme floods rising since 1985
http://floodobservatory.colorado.edu/ Droughts are a little more variable but increasing in the Southern Hemisphere in the last 30 years.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.100 ... 013-1019-5This paper analyzes changes in areas under droughts over the past three decades and alters our understanding of how amplitude and frequency of droughts differ in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) and Northern Hemisphere (NH). Unlike most previous global-scale studies that have been based on climate models, this study is based on satellite gauge-adjusted precipitation observations. Here, we show that droughts in terms of both amplitude and frequency are more variable over land in the SH than in the NH. The results reveal no significant trend in the areas under drought over land in the past three decades. However, after investigating land in the NH and the SH separately, the results exhibit a significant positive trend in the area under drought over land in the SH, while no significant trend is observed over land in the NH.
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