Article Review Craig Welch. “How Climate Change Likely Strengthened Recent Hurricanes”. National Geographic. Published on September 20, 2017.
Introduction The article chosen is “How Climate Change Likely Strengthened Recent Hurricanes”, written by Craig Welch (2017). The article discusses on how the climate change (global warming) which is human made disaster, strengthened natural disaster that just happened recently; Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.
Based on the John Roach (2005), according to hurricane historian Jay Barnes of Pine Knoll Shores, North Carolina, ocean heat is the key ingredient for hurricane formation. More heat could "generate more storms and more intense hurricanes," he said. The duration and strength of hurricanes have increased by about 50 percent over the last three decades, according to study author Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Emanuel's finding defies existing models for measuring storm strength. Current models suggest that the intensity of hurricanes and typhoons should increase by 5 percent for every 1ºC (1.8ºF) rise in sea surface temperature. The strongest part of a hurricane is the eye wall, on the edge of the calm center. "The size of the eye wall can vary, and the intensity of the storm can vary depending on how much heat is available" and other factors such as high altitude winds, Barnes said. According to Emanuel, if global temperatures continue to rise, it is reasonable to assume that hurricane activity will increase, as there is more heat to drive the storms.
Scientists have been aware since the nineteenth century of the planetary impacts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In recent decades, concern has grown over the issue of global climate change caused by increased accumulations of these gases (Harris, Roach and Codur, 2017). Oil production and use have made significant contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions, increases in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere and the consequent changes to our climate. Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely to be due to human activities (Cook et al., 2016). Consequent of rapidly use of burning oil and fossil fuel from past lead to the collected abundant of harmful gases in the present atmosphere and ahead. The burning of fossil fuels produces over twenty-two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, but it is estimated that natural processes can only absorb about half of that amount. This causes a net increase of eleven billion tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide per year (Coyle and Simmons, 2014).
Article summary As indicated in the article, the recently occurred 2017 Atlantic hurricane season has been extremely active, and deadly. Between Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, thousands of structures have been destroyed and many people have been killed, injured, or displaced. Hurricane Harvey's deadly mixture of wind and moisture hit America's fourth-largest city with a ferocity that Texas has never seen. The scientist said that these deadly hurricanes is related with the global warming which the extra energy from global warming is supercharging these superstorms.
Hurricanes which are naturally occurring disaster become worst when adding up the effect of global warming. When the effect of hurricanes and global warming are combined together, the right condition come along and produced a storm that is stronger than we might expect. As being stated in the article, hurricane Harvey tend to weaken as they approach land because they loss access to the hot and wet ocean air that gives the storms their energy. But in this case, the National Hurricanes Center Data told that Harvey’s wind speeds intensified by about 45 miles per hour in the last 24 hours before landfall. Kerry Emmanual (an atmospheric science professor at the Massachuets Institute of Technology) said the potential for wind speeds rise rapidly increase due to warmer conditions. So, it’s proved that effect of global warming indirectly make the hurricanes become worst.
Critical evaluation From this article, it provides some information on how climate change related with hurricane and how climate change strengthened the hurricane that frequently occurs lately in this year. The author of this article is not saying that climate change is the reason behind the hurricane, but rather climate change is making natural phenomenon occurs more frequently. This article are helpful to make people realizes that the natural disasters are getting worse due to their bad actions that contributed to the climate change. However, this article may not helpful in giving out the solutions for this issue.
Generally, we can do something to solve this issue such as by reducing heat-trapping emissions that we are putting into the atmosphere. Personally, we need to take an action to reduce our personal carbon emissions. For example, we can avoid open burning to reduce the contribution to global warming. But to fully address that threat of global warming that could lead to hurricanes, we have technology and practical solutions for this problem.
The first steps to reduce the heat trapping emissions is by expanding the use of renewable energy and transform our energy system to one that is cleaner and less dependent on coal and other fossil fuels. By taking this action, we also can increase the vehicle fuel efficiency as we use renewable energy. We can consider it as the 2 in 1 actions or killing 2 birds with one stone. We acknowledged that the main contributor to the carbon emissions is from the factories. The factories become the primary driver of global warming. Thus, the government should take an action by place limits on the amount of carbon that polluters are allowed to emit so that we can reduce the contributions to the global warming.
On the other hand, the government can build a clean energy by investing in efficient energy technologies, industries and approaches. Like other countries, we can build a clean Power Plan in our country that is significant opportunity in years to help curb the growing consequences of climate change. Besides, we should reduce tropical deforestation that associated with global warming emissions. We cannot deny that we did deforestation for many reasons such as to convert the forestland to farms, ranches and urban use that will bring goods for us. But, uncontrolled deforestation will eventually become harmful to human being such as adverse impacts on bio-sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
In conclusion, this article had provided a lot of information about how climate change has anything to do with hurricane and how this climate change strengthened the hurricanes. Further action should be done to make sure that there will be a good solutions for this issues and we altogether can prevent or at least reduce the impact of this disaster.
References Craig Welch (September 20, 2017). How Climate Change Likely Strengthened Recent Hurricanes. National Geographic. Retrieved from https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/08/hurricane-harvey-climate-change-global-warming-weather/
Eugene D. Coyle and Richard A. Simmons (2014, March 15). Understanding the Global Energy Crisis. Purdue University Press. Retrieved from http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1028&context=purduepress_eb ooks
Jonathan M. Harris, Brian Roach and Anne-Marie Codur (2017). The Economics of Global Climate Change. Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University. Retrieved from http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/education_materials/modules/The_Economics_of_Global_Climate_Change.pdf
John Roach (August 4, 2005). Is Global Warming Making Hurricanes Worse?. National Geographic News. Retrieved from https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0804_050804_hurricanewarming.html
National Hurricane Center. Hurricanes and climate change. Retrieved from https://www.c2es.org/content/hurricanes-and-climate-change/
Union of Concerned Scientists. Global Warming Solutions: Reduce Emissions. Retrieved from http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/globalwarming/solutions/global-warming-solutions-reduce-emissions#.WiuqmIaWbIX