In the Northern Hemisphere in 2017 and 2018 brought several destructive hurricanes to the shores of North America, the Caribbean, and throughout the Pacific rim. Such extreme weather events are predicted to get more common and more severe with increasing climate change.
Several participating classes in the ISCFC were or are in the path of these storms and we hope for the best for them, their families and communities.
We would love to hear from students affected directly and indirectly by extreme weather events, and also any students who have been following the news this summer.
What are your thoughts about the connection between climate change and extreme weather events? Has this hurricane season increased your concern about climate change or not? Do you think that US citizens and residents (and others in the region) will take climate change more seriously now?
Extreme Weather >
How Climate Change Increases Wildfires
As of recent, the frequency and duration of wildfires in California have increased dramatically. An article by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions writes that the current surge of wildfires is a repercussion of climate change. A number of factors contribute to wildfire risk: temperature, soil moisture, the presence of potential fuel, etc. Global warming, a type of climate change, raises global temperatures, consequently drying out soil and plant life, a potential fuel for fires. The rise in temperatures also creates drier conditions because of drought and elongates fire season. Combining all these elements, the number of large fires has doubled between 1984 and 2015 in the western United States. As a person who lives in California, I have experienced the effects of the wildfires firsthand. One day when I was in middle school, the sky was turned orange because of a convergence of wildfire smoke and fog. The issue of wildfires is a serious issue that must be addressed by society as a whole. Some ways communities can reduce the impact of wildfires is by giving more resources to firefighting and fire prevention. Another way wildfires can be avoided is by discouraging developments near fire-prone forests and removing fuels, such as dead trees, from forests that are at risk.