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 >
"Global Warming" and a harsh reality
After the abnormally extreme weather season that we experienced, I have observed a misunderstanding surrounding the reality of climate change. After the recent brutal hurricanes and winter storms, understandably, people have been confused about how "global WARMING" could cause snowy, rainy, and cold weather events. Although there is a clear contrast between these entities, global warming, one of the results of increased CO2 emissions, is the cause of these weather abnormalities. According to NOAA, both winter storms and hurricanes are caused by warm seas, which cause moisture to rise into the air, forming storms. Therefore, if global warming causes global ocean temperatures to rise, storms caused by warm oceans will become more frequent and more violent. Although the name "global warming" may make this connection seem counterintuitive, the roots of these storms do tie back to warming oceans. Although I live in California, where there have not been any extreme weather events recently, the recent storms in the eastern United States showed me a harsh reality. For mos t of my life, climate change has been a real, yet somewhat inconceivable topic. I have always understood the science behind it, and know what has been happening at the polar ice caps, but when I was younger, the devastation of climate change seemed distant. However, when my mom had to flee Houston from hurricane Harvey's floodwaters and hurricane Maria wreaked havoc on St Martin, where one of my family members lives, my eyes opened to the harsh reality of climate change. No longer can we treat climate change and all of its "symptoms," including global warming, as foreign, abstract concepts. Climate change is real, the distant-seeming ideas of rising sea levels and violent storms will become reality if we do not do anything to combat them and if people remain ignorant about this catastrophe.
Sources:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/climate- … me-snow-us
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/how … -form.html