Do you want to know what climate change is? Then read these 17 extreme weather conditions from 2017. As scientists predicted, climate change in causing more and more extreme weather conditions on earth, like these 17 examples. These include heat waves, floods and droughts.
The American Meteorological Society actually determined global warming as being a significant factor in these extreme weather conditions. Our planet is warming up and is more warm than last century. Global warming is actually continuing, and it’s happening all around the globe. Only a few places in the world seem to not experience that much damage from global warming. The rest of us is doomed to live more-and-more in inhabitable climate conditions.
The role of extreme weather in climate change
Each time we experience extreme weather, scientists analyze the weather conditions to estimate to what extent the weather is normal or not in order to determine to what extent climate change is increasing or not. This field of scientific study in climate change is called ‘attribution research’. So in case of extreme weather, scientists are able to investigate weather this is a sign of climate change.
Extreme floods
In climate change, it appears that the water systems on earth are under extreme pressure, causing extreme floods and water disasters. This has a lot to do with temperature and the fact that warm air can hold more water than cold(er) air. So this means that global warming could lead to heavier rain showers. Unexpected heavy rain showers cause floods.
For example, in 2017 in California, when enormous rain fall lead to a huge amount of water putting the Oreville Dam, the largest water reservoir of California, under enormous pressure. The dam almost collapsed. At the same time, the rain fall led to Hurricane Harvey, a category 4 hurricane, bringing a lot of damage an deaths.
Of course scientists in de US investigated all these events to determine a cause or trend in order to have more knowledge about the extreme weather conditions. It appeared that no single storm or flood was to blame for all the damage. The cause was actually one single but enormous flood that just didn’t seem to stop.
Remarkably, in 2017 there have also been major floods in Peru, China en Bangladesh. The California incident definitely was not a unique event. In Bangladesh in rained for 6 days straight, causing enormous floods from extreme rainfall. Also remarkably, the floods in Bangladesh occurred before the monsoon season even started. Global warming was the main cause of these unexpected but heavy rainfalls.
Heat waves around the world
Heat waves are slow killers of humans, nature and animal life. In 2017 and 2018, a number of heat waves have occurred. Every since the data collection on climate issues has started in mid 1800’s, the temperature around the world has risen. Heat waves have always occurred, but it seems that global warming also makes the heat waves more extreme. This results in new heat records. And new heat records seem to appear more often every year, and even multiple times a year.
Climate scientists are pretty certain that heat waves become more severe due to climate change. In 2017, for example, southern Europe had an exceptionally warm heat wave. They actually nicknames this heat wave ‘Lucifer’. It was extremely hot during the days, but at night the temperature hardly dropped. The chance to break heat records is currently about three times larger than in de 1950s. That’s just crazy.
The same thing happened in China, with the hottest temperatures on record appearing in northeastern China. The warm air from this region continued affecting the entire region.
This flow of warm air will only become larger and appear more often. The Arctic ice is supposed to cool down this wave of hot air, but as the Arctic ice is decreasing, the cooling attribute of Arctic ice is also decreasing. It’s like we are loosing the air-conditioning of the earth. Also in China, these levels of heat waves are getting less and less unique.
And everybody buying air-conditionings is not helping global warming either, but is considerably making it worse.
Also read about climate change in 2020
Not only heat, but also extreme drought
Droughts are not only determined by extreme heat, but moreover by no rainfall during a long period of time. Like in a dessert, nothing grows in areas that experience extreme drought. However, extreme drought is happening more and more, even in areas that that normally have plenty of rainfall.
For example the area of the Northern Great Plains. This is a huge agricultural area. The extreme drought threatened harvests to succeed. Related to this, the extreme drought let to harvests being ruined and a billion dollar disaster. Extreme drought means dried out soil, failed harvests and a billion dollar lost. So no water, no food and no money.
Scientific research has shown that an extreme drought is more likely to occur nowadays than a few decades ago. The cause is the fact the we currently experience the highest level of CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the air, causing droughts.
What to do to prevent extreme weather conditions?
There is a way out. We need to reverse climate chance. We should not damage our climate any longer in order to reduce the effect on global warming. We still pollute our environment, causing global warming to happen. As a result, global warming is making parts of the earth more and more inhabitable for humans. And what do we do? As a response, we turn to air-conditionings polluting our climate even more. This vicious circle is killing us. We need to find a way out!
The last possible response is to do nothing. By doing nothing, the effect of global warming is only getting worse. Until global warming is actually not reversible. Or is is already not reversible? Then we are totally screwed.