Showing posts with label steffan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label steffan. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Monsters - Bigger, Stronger, More Dangerous

Climate Change is making our familiar monsters bigger, stronger and more dangerous.

Supertyphoon Haiyan (known as Yolanda in the Philippines) blew past the definition of a Category 5 storm. It looks like it's time to create a new category, just as Australia has created a new category for fire alerts - we now have 'Catastrophic' sitting above the old 'Extreme' Fire Warning.

The diagram above shows how warming oceans provide the energy that makes cyclones/typhoons/hurricanes bigger, stronger, and more damaging.

Professor Will Steffen, a researcher at the Australian National University, says scientists understand how a hotter, moister climate is already affecting storms such as Haiyan. 
Once cyclones form, they get most of their energy from the surface waters of the ocean. We know sea-surface temperatures are warming pretty much around the planet, so that's a pretty direct influence of climate change on the nature of the storm. Prof Will Steffan.


So, when someone says, "We can't say that climate change made that storm worse," you can reply, "We can say that climate change is making tropical storms worse. It's a brave person who would claim that doesn't apply to this particular storm. Especially when, like Haiyan, it is the biggest storm ever to make landfall." 

Without strong action to reduce emissions, we are ensuring there will be ever-bigger monsters battering our children.


News from the Transformation tab.

Apple has announced plans to open a new factory in Mesa, Arizona — a facility that will run on 100 percent renewable energy from day one.