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 >
extreme weather and climate change
extreme weather is influenced by climate change. For example the amount of rain in the sky is due to ice caps melting and more water getting released which in turn make rain more heavy and more dangerous. Another example is droughts which have been increasing at an alarming rate due to the fact that water is getting sparce in some areas and the heat from the sun is increasing due to greenhouse gas emmisions.
I also think that extreme weather is caused by climate change and is something that can be avoided or less extreme if the world made more effort to battle climate change. Some places are drier and are reaching dangerous levels of high temperature and heat while others are experiencing extreme cold weather. Yet there are still people with higher power that are convincing other people that climate change is not real.
I 100% agree. In Maine we didn’t have any snow during Christmas and now it’s spring and we’re about to get dumped on with predictions of 2 feet of snow. We also had 3 100 year storms. 3 times in the last few months we’ve been completely flooded, roads blocked and unable to leave our driveway. These storms are so uncommon they happen every 100 years. This all has to with climate change and how we’re getting less snow throughout the season and getting rain instead.
I agree! We burn about 40.9 million tons of fossil fuels each year, and we've been burning fossil fuels all the way since the 1800s (of course, the yearly emissions have increased a lot since then). With these emissions, we're releasing so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, leading to the air and oceans to warm. The warming of the air and oceans increases the rate of land and sea ice melting, leading to a rise in sea level. With the rising of the sea level, we're going to see a lot more coastal "high-tide" flooding, as well as flooding cities through inlets and rivers. On the flip side, as the earth warms, drier climates (including, not limited to deserts) are going to get drier. The hotter air will lead to more evaporation of water from the ground, and droughts get more severe.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/image … ue-to-rise
https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change … e-weather/