By: Nicholas Fox, Snapchat Manager
Whether or not you believe in climate change, someone has to ask the question, does climate change affect natural disasters? And if it does, to what degree?
Climate change is believed to be a human-made phenomenon resulting from the burning of fossil fuels and the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
These forms of pollution cause high amounts of carbon dioxide to rise into the atmosphere trapping heat from the sun due to its higher molecular density compared to oxygen. This trapped heat and excess carbon dioxide have horrendous implications on our planet.
Rising temperatures cause the oceans to become warmer, killing sensitive organisms and disrupting the balance of delicate ecosystems. Increased carbon dioxide also causes oceans to become more acidic, basically depriving fish of oxygen needed to survive. Usually, this wouldn’t be a problem with forests being banks for carbon dioxide to be deposited into with oxygen being created for withdrawals. But with the increase of deforestation and large-scale animal farming, there has been no way for the cycle to continue effectively.
A glimpse into the past few news articles this year shows major catastrophic level natural disasters laying waste to the world before it. Hurricanes are no exception. The increasing rate of evaporation makes the air more humid, which is fuel for hurricanes.
The warm air produced through climate change has allowed warmer air to hold more moisture, allowing warmer oceans to increase the power of hurricanes.
Professor Jacqueline Robbins, Instructor of Chemistry and Physical Sciences, offered her words on the matter, “In a warmer world the atmosphere will be more humid, and that means more rain and weather.
The storms are fueled and driven by the latent heat of evaporated waters, so the forecast is for more hurricanes in the future, and those storms are predicted to be stronger as the climate warms. That forecast, combined with higher sea level from melting glaciers, causes higher coastal flooding and more damage to communities on the coast. When Super Storm Sandy hit the New Jersey coast in 2012, it was time to look at the consequences of building on the beaches and barrier islands.
We need to accept climate change as inevitable and make the necessary adjustments to our lifestyle.”
Kevin Trenberth’s paper on: “The uncertainty In Hurricanes and Global Warming” also states that “Trends in human-influenced environmental changes are now evident in hurricane regions.
These changes are expected to affect hurricane intensity and rainfall, but the effect on hurricane numbers remains unclear. The key scientific question is not whether there is a trend in hurricane numbers and tracks, but rather how hurricanes are changing.”
It is clear that our actions affect this planet.
Saving the world and stopping climate change should not be seen as the latest trend, but a preventative measure to reduce the power of hurricanes in the future, ones like the powerful storms that flooded Texas, New Orleans, and The Bahamas.
