CLIMATIC CHANGE AND NATURAL CALAMITIES

New Delhi, 24 January 2006

New Delhi, January 26 (INFA): The recent series of natural disasters tsunamis, cyclones, floods and earthquakes that have hit the world has sparked off a major debate: Is climate change responsible for these major catastrophes? 

Researchers and scientists agree that there is a trend…. A worrisome one. The reinsurance company Munich Re, a member of the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Disaster Reduction, studied great natural disasters between 1950 and 2000.  It found that there were 20 such calamities between 1950 and 1959, which rose to 82 between 1990 and 1999. 

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent found that the average annual number of natural disasters during 2000-2004 was 55 per cent higher than in the previous period.

The research states that hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma have shown a clear link between global warming and the power – not frequency – of hurricanes.  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that a combined measure of duration and intensity of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean has doubled over the last 30 years.

Similarly, a Georgia Tech study showed that the number of category four and five hurricanes has increased in the last 30 years, while the number of category 1,2 and 3 storms has decreased. 

These trends correspond to increase in average ocean surface temperatures over the same period.  Scientists around the world are certain that global warming is responsible for this phenomenon, as the strongest hurricanes have occurred during the past 15 years, when ocean surface temperatures climbed to record levels.  The bottom line is that climate change is creating more intense hurricanes.

Global surface temperatures have risen by an average of 0.6^oC.  This could result in a   30 cm rise in ocean levels because of melting ice caps.

This is further reinforced by a report from American scientists that the arctic ice this summer shrank for the fourth consecutive year, and is now at its smallest point for a century!  If excessive water levels in the oceans are not enough cause for worry, lack of water on land is already paying havoc with the environment.

The Amazon River in Peru and parts of Brazil is at its lowest level in 30 years, killing fauna, damaging the world’s biggest rainforests and crippling life in general.  Some scientists blame higher ocean temperatures caused by global warming, while others claim that extreme climate variability and deforestation is the root cause.

The ill-effects of climate change do not stop here.  A recent study conducted by the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, Britain, states that global warming is breaking down Europe’s central heating system. 

The Gulf Stream – also called the Atlantic Ocean ‘conveyor belt’ – that carries warm water north from the tropics has weakened by 30 per cent in 12 years, threatening the country with severe cold temperatures.

Scientists had long predicted that melting ice caps could disrupt the currents that keep Britain at least 5⁰C warmer.  The new research points to a cooling of 1^oC over the next one or two decades, forewarning a deeper freeze in the Gulf stream ceases to flow altogether. ---INFA