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 >
Wild Fires
Global warming has caused a number of different thing to happen. One of those includes wild fires. They are getting more serious and more likely to happen as the world gets hotter.
So, Dio. Been a while. Could you possibly elaborate on how they are getting more serious? Statistics maybe? While I'll agree wild fires are getting more and more common, I'd like to know any ways they can populate more.
As someone who lives near where most wildfires happen, I completely understand and agree with this post. Not many people want to recognize that global warming is one of the factors responsible for mass wildfires. Wildfires are mass destructors and we need to find new ways to confront their origins and fight to find ways to ward them off.
I agree that global warming has caused many more wildfires in recent years but that is not the only driving factor behind it. Take California for example, in 2018, 44 people died directly due to wildfires and this is an atrocious statistic but the TIME Magazine only attribute them to global warming which they name as the cause for these fires. Wildfires have increased in deadliness and numbers on average but global warming is only a fraction of the cause of them and 44 deaths in California, 2018.
Ultimately what fires are also caused by including global warming is humans interrupting the natural fire cycles present naturally. We have suppressed fires to the point that there is an abundance of plant matter present only waiting to be fuel. Then when a fire does occur, it is often much larger and deadlier than it would be if we had let fires naturally get rid of excess plant growth. In fact, fires are a key part of the ecosystem as demonstrated in Redwood trees which require fire in order to reproduce or plant their seeds within the confines of their cones. A lso natural fires continue many cycles mainly the nitrogen and carbon cycles in which carbon is released once again into the atmosphere (naturally which is good), and dead plant matter containing carbon and nitrogen is recycled by decomposers or microscopic organisms back into the ground. Causing a build up of natural plant matter due to the lack of fires because of human intervention only causes deadlier more widespread fires. This coupled with global warming only increases fires occurrences and people's population of fire danger areas at risk could could cause their death as a result.
Sources Cited -
http://time.com/4985252/california-wild … te-change/ - statistics
Second paragraph/claim I got information from a documentary (BTC Credit for Semester 1).
Another Source - https://www.vox.com/2018/8/7/17661096/c … ate-change
In California, global warming and the draught have meant that it is hotter and drier than in a very long time. Even though there has been a lot of rain in the winter, but fall, everything that has grown during the wet winter and spring dies in the hot, dry seasons, and this tinder can be easily lit on fire. An example of this is the fire in Paradise. The final cause is PG&E, who run the electric and gas system in California, who allowed some of their equipment to break and cause the sparks that started the fire. So while there are multiple causes, global warming does seem to be a big contributor to the growth in wildfires.
Sources Cited -
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/busi … -fire.html.