Welcome!
Hi and welcome to my new blog 'Extreme Weather: The Deadly consequences of Climate change?'
This blog is part of my third 3rd year Geography module 'Global Environmental Change'. This is my second blog that I have started this academic term, the first one was for my other module 'Water and Development in Africa', in which I will post weekly about the complex relationship between water and environmental change in Africa. That blog has quite a few cross overs with this one, You should take a look. The first blog, provides an important overview, in how extreme rainfall will become more extreme due to increasing temperatures.
This will also be a weekly blog, where I will be exploring the complex relationship between Extreme Weather and climate Change. A vast array of topics will be covered using academic reports, news articles, books, and videos to explore this topic further. I chose extreme weather, because this is where my interests lie, as i want to get into disaster management of some sort, especially with climate change, projected to intensify these events.
My interest for natural hazards stem from a 9-week holiday in Grenada visiting my grandparents in the summer of 2005. July 14th, hurricane Emily hit which was quite devastatingly early into the holiday. This has got to be probably one of the fondest memories I have with my grandparents.... I remember it so vividly, just seeing the power of nature, and everyone's life- their homes, their livelihoods, everything they owned- just rolling across the roads with the wind and rain. Watching the devastation around us from a window, it was very surreal.
Figure 1: Path of Hurricane Emily 2004, Eastern Caribbean, Grenada
This blog therefore is a great opportunity to explore my interests further, and share what I find you all.
Climate Change
The world is getting warmer- Over the past 30 years there has been a trend of increasingly higher average temperatures.
The purpose of the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer- reviewed and published scientific literature (Oreskes, 2004). In its Climate change 2014 report, the IPCC states that the scientific consensus is that Earth climate is warming due to human causes.
Figure 2: Observed Global Climate change and its causes taken from the IPCC 2014 summary for policy makers
Climate change has widespread implications. Changes in extreme weather and climate events have been observed since about 1950. According to the IPCC some of these changes have been linked to anthropogenic influences.
Extreme weather and climate change
Extreme weather and climate events are events that:
- Don't happen frequently
- Vary from the 'norm' in severity or duration
- Have severe impacts
With climate change scientists expect many changes in extreme weather events these include:
- Extreme weather events occurring more frequently than they did in the past
- Events becoming more intense, with the potential to create more damage
- Events lasting long than the 'norm'
- Events occurring at different times of the year ie. earlier or later in the season or year than they used to.
Figure 3: The strength of evidence for human induced climate change causing extreme events
Strong scientific evidence links climate change with heat waves and coastal flooding. Other forms of extreme weather have been closely linked with climate change, such as extreme precipitation events in some areas and severe droughts in others. There is however limited evidence and confidence from observed data that Tornadoes and Hurricanes are caused by climate change (figure 3). However this is an active area of research, where there is a strong scientific consensus that increasing temperatures will increase the severity, not necessarily the amount of these events.
Solomon et al, (2007) Bell curve
Figure 4: Solomon et al, (2007) Bell curve- increase in temperature means increase occurrence of extreme weather
Watch the Extreme Weather Bell Curve Animation
Weather variation can be described with a rough bell- shaped curve (figure 4). A small increase in average temperature leads to vast changes in weather: A changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, spatial intent, duration and timing of extreme weather and climate events.
Typically, extreme weather is very rare, however with climate change, the odds of an extreme weather event taking place is increasingly higher, and likely to be even more extreme.Will extreme weather become the new normal?
Even if we dramatically curb emissions, extreme weather will be apart of our future. Therefore, we must adapt to the likelihood that extreme weather events are becoming ever more commonplace. Smart planning and engineering solutions will need to be developed to cope with this obstacle, especially for the most vulnerable.
Next week's post will look at Hurricane Matthew and discuss the possibility if climate change played a role in the extremity of this event.
No comments:
Post a Comment