We're Cooked!

The Earth is currently warming, and it is causing natural disasters like hurricanes to intensify and cause more destruction. In this blog we’re going to talk about how global temperatures have caused hurricanes to intensify and how that fits in with all the other blogs I have spoken about. Global temperatures are rising and that affects our oceans and also, affects everyone in some sort of way, but for right now let’s stay on the topic of hurricanes. We have talked about sea-level rising, windshear, and increased coastal population, and all these things have a factor of making hurricanes very strong, but for those things to increase or decrease depends on temperatures on Earth.

When sea-level rises, that means that ice has melt in the poles and that’s causing water to build up in the ocean from the glaciers. Temperatures are rising and that’s the reason the ice is melting. Over the last century temperatures have begun to rise causing the sea-level to rise and in the graph I’m about to show will go along with that, but for now I want to make it clear that climate change is a factor of how the temperatures are rising because of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide going into our atmosphere. There are other factors as to why temperatures are rising but it hasn’t been proven yet as to what the actual cause of temperatures rising is really. So, let’s just focus on what we do know and what we do know is certain models have been looked at to tell if climate change has been occurring and it’s a factor of how temperatures will rise.

This data shows in the last century or longer, temperatures that have rose also had an effect on the sea level. We can see that since 1960 temperatures have raised significantly and with the temperatures rising, the sea level rose with it, and that could be a reason our hurricane damage is so bad because the higher the sea level, the more flooding damage that will done on land once hurricanes come through.

Now that we talked about temperatures and sea level rising, let’s talk about how temperatures on the coast get people to come there and how temperatures factor in hurricanes and become more intensified. Everyone likes warm temperatures, or should I say most people like the warmth and coming to an area that is warm especially, along the beach is probably the best way to live for some people but if you think about it, it’s actually causing warming to worse, which is making hurricanes worse too. Since temperatures are warm in locations like Miami, Florida or Key West, people like to vacation there or possibly live there because they want to escape the cold but what they don’t realize is that our coastal areas are already becoming overpopulated with people, which is making temperatures rise more because of the warming that is taking place, especially because with more people comes more greenhouse gases being put into our atmosphere. People have to drive a car or use some type of energy that gives off carbon dioxide and pushes it into our atmosphere. People also don’t clean up after themselves, so that plastic bottle or bag is creating a hazardous life for us because someone wouldn’t just throw it away. Things like that can also get into our oceans and do bad things for our ocean life. If there is flooding from hurricanes imagine all the debris that you could be hit with that the ocean sucks up from humans leaving trash or dumping trash outside.

Global average temperatures are the most important when talking about intensifying hurricanes because for these factors to increase (sea level and coastal population), temperature has to go up for these things to get worse. Now when temperatures go down like we had seen in the last image, warming ends up not being a problem but now you got to find ways to stay warm because it’s cold now and there’s not a lot of people that usually live in these areas. Now that we have looked at some trends that go along with intensifying hurricanes due to climate change, let’s talk about the damage and destruction hurricanes have caused since warming has been happening here on Earth.

Works Consulted

“How climate change makes hurricanes more destructive”, Environment Defense Fund. December 29, 2021. https://www.edf.org/climate/how-climate-change-makes-hurricanes-more-destructive?utm_source=google&utm_campaign=edf_none_upd_dmt&utm_medium=cpc&utm_id=1606920135&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9cOplM209wIV9cmUCR24ZAs5EAAYASAAEgLtnPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Images

“Climate Impacts on Coastal Areas”, United States Environmental Protection Agency. October 6th, 2016.https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/climate-impacts/climate-impacts-coastal-areas_.html#main-content

“FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS, CO₂, TEMPERATURE, AND SEA LEVEL RISE” Stable Climate. 2012. http://www.stableclimate.org/graphs