Experts see a future where there are worse natural disasters than what we have so far experienced in 2020. A record-breaking area of California now burns due to an almost two-decade mega-drought. Oregon is burning as well, in areas where it was not typical in the past.
Ashley, 3, and Ethan, 2, look at a burned bicycle after wildfires destroyed a neighbourhood in Bear Creek, Phoenix, Oregon, U.S., September 10, 2020.
Worldwide Disasters
Currently swirling in the Atlantic is the 16th & 17th tropical storms this year, which broke records in intensity and early arrival. The Korean Peninsula and Japan were slammed by the powerful Haishen typhoon this week.
Death Valley had a record 130 degrees of heat last month, the hottest that our planet has been for almost a hundred years, and the third hottest record ever. Phoenix is also getting record heat in the triple digits, while Colorado experienced an extreme weather swing as it went from a 90-degree hot weather to snowfall in only a week. Abroad, famously cold Siberia also hit 100 degrees early this year, along with wildfires.
The Amazon and Australia were also in flames.
A derecho ripped through Iowa and caused damages worth billions.
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Experts Say It Will Get Worse
Freak disasters seem to occur everywhere this 2020, and these have been linked by scientists to climate change. Unfortunately, experts are saying the worst is yet to come, which will make 2020 look mild in comparison.
Kim Cobb, a climate scientist from Georgia Tech, says that it will get a lot worse. Being a climate scientist, she is scared for the future.
According to Waleed Abdalati, chief of environmental sciences at Colorado University, and former chief scientist of NASA, there is a clear trajectory regarding the increase in climate change and disasters due to the burning of gas, oil, and coal. It is fundamental physics, he said. Abdalati predicts that we will look back at 2020 and miss it. The same sentiment was expressed by Cobb.
Kathie Dello, the state climatologist of North Carolina, says that what is currently happening is the kind of climate that scientists predicted one to two decades ago.
According to Cobb, however, the magnitude of the events now occurring was hard to imagine during those past decades, just as future climatic disasters are hard to imagine today.
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She says the events which so far transpired this year seem like a sci-fi movie back in 2000. The prospect is horrifying. Cobb says that the years in the 2030s will be significantly worse than they are today.
According to climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck, environment dean of the University of Michigan, in three decades, we will surely have double the disasters than what we currently have. Abdalati advised expecting even more droughts, stronger winds, more floods, and heavy downpours. As scientists, he says they are not surprised for they understand the laws of physics.
Greenhouse Effect
According to Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, we put more energy into our system because we trapped more heat in our atmosphere. It is known as the greenhouse effect. This translates to more energy going into tropical storms, with changing rainfall patterns bringing drought in some areas and heavy rains in others. California is suffering fires due to drying trees and plants brought about by drought.
Overpeck says he hopes that we will someday look back at 2020 and say natural disasters got crazy enough so that we got sufficiently motivated to act on climate change.
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