It has come to the attention of various organizations and institutions that global warming plays a major role in promoting natural disasters. Climate change has made wildfires more severe due to rising temperatures causing longer summers and the onset of drier weather, thus creating ideal conditions for vegetation to dry up. Unhindered fuel availability worsens the fire risk even further!
How Climate Change Makes Wildfires Worse
These conditions have resulted in California, Australia along with various continents experiencing out-of-control land fires that significantly impact their wildlife and ecosystem. While it is true wildfires are expected to happen due to the changing overall weather conditions, the article aims to elaborate further on how global warming aggravates this problem.
You may think climate change in isolation would not do much, but as previously stated, multiple factors facilitate in promoting climatic change… and that has deadly effects. Rising temperatures make summer wildfire seasons longer, resulting in a higher risk. The combination of high temperatures over an expanded season means that summers would be hotter and devoid of precipitation (Precipitation refers to any form of water that falls from the sky). Prolonged warm summers with hardly any rain cause vegetation to dry out which serves as excellent fuel for any wildfire.
Floods: When it Rains too Much, too Quickly
Floods are also major natural disasters which have become more frequent as a result of climate change. When air is warmed up, it can have a high moisture amount and when this moisture condenses as heavy rainfall, the consequences are disastrous. Overwhelmed rivers, flooded roads, and inundated buildings may occur. This is exceptionally hazardous in places where the citizens are not well-equipped with drainage systems for heavy rain or flooding.
Hurricanes and storms, which are progressively getting more powerful due to climate change, are causing intense rainfall too, thus worsening the flooding situation. Devastating floods such as the ones that happened in Germany in 2021 when a colossal storm brought flash floods that ruined towns and countless lives were lost have been reported in various cities around the world.
Droughts: When Everything Turns to An Arid Soil
As every bird has its day, so does climate change pinpoints to droughts as well. With the significant increase in temperature, water starts to evaporate at an accelerated rate, resulting in dry barren land. For areas such as the Middle East where temperature can exceed 52 degrees Celsius, the leftovers are dry dust. In other places, drought periods are becoming increasingly longer and harsher, causing issues with growing crops, potable water supply, and wildfires.
Regions that are familiar with dry weather already, such as the Aztec and African countries, are being heavily impacted.
Crops fail, reservoirs run dry, and communities are forced to ration water. In some areas, entire ecosystems are struggling to survive.
The Relationship Among All These Catastrophes
It is possible to connect all climate phenomena such as wildfires, floods, and drought, and view them as individual yet interrelated issues; global warming can be regarded as the root cause of them all. All Of Them: the increase of carbon pollution that is a result of sound pollution and deforestation changes the climatic patterns resulting in the occurrence of extreme twenty-first-century weather conditions events. And because these catastrophes are becoming more common, the harm they cause increases as well. Global warming contributes to the deterioration of environmental conditions. These extreme climatic events also contribute to global warming through the emission of carbon and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
While a severe drought, flooding, or a wildfire may seem unrelated to each other at the surface, these climate events share a cause, ‘climate change which results from the depletion of fossil fuels and global warming. The untamed temperature rise instigates abnormal weather trends which results in such happenings, the repetition of these events only further fuels the cycle. The correlation between these natural disasters and climate change is disastrous, the former causes a rise of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere thereby intensifying climate change. All these disasters when put together spawn a vicious cycle further causing more greenhouse gases to be ignited.
Tackling climate change as a problem does give off a sense of helplessness however it does allow for a series of measures that lead to its improvement. The most viable one is limiting the release of carbon dioxide emissions, this specifically entails switching over to renewable sources of energy like wind, solar, and hydropower.
Apart from this, climate change resilience needs to be fostered and further investments into it rather than infrastructure that aids the halting of floods and ecosystems that aid carbon absorption can be created. Individuals, businesses, and authorities need to indulge in climate change discussions that forward the idea of climate change and how to mitigate its impacts.
Conclusion
Climate change is fueling natural calamities like wildfires, floods, and severe droughts, and the science supporting it is clear, that these figures will only worsen if the increasing temperature trend continues. However, if we strive to be impactful in the present with sustainable methods to protect the environment and its resources, we can use the damage to begin constructing a resilient world of our vision. This is the moment when we must take a stand. This situation is crucial for our world and those who will come after us.
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