Posts Tagged ‘Environment’
Hurricane Sandy Is Gone But Global Warming Rages On
Thanks for visiting. This blog is now dormant. Nearly everything here explaining climate science, causes of global warming, connection to extreme weather is current and unlikely to go out of date anytime soon. Hopefully that makes it a useful resource. Most of my new climate and environment articles are for the global news agency IPS and can be found here: Stephen Leahy, senior correspondent.
For more about me, environmental journalism and how you can contribute please go my website:
Stephen Leahy, International Environmental Journalist
I will still see comments, so if you have something to contribute please do.
Thanks for reading. — Stephen
Anthrostorm Sandy Speaks: My Landfall Near Atlantic City
Natural disaster trends 1900-2009; 2011 and 2012 are off the chart
Earlier I called myself a hybrid storm: part nature, part human. That’s not quite right. Humans and Hurricanes are part of nature. We both thrive on this planet thanks to sunlight, water and carbon dioxide (CO2). Hurricanes and tropical storms have been around for millions of years. In the last 50 years things have changed. The oceans are warmer. This week the waters off the US east coast were 3 degrees C warmer than normal.
The air is warmer at 0.8C (1F) and there is 4 to 6 percent more moisture. This is a fundamental change. The amount of extra heat-energy is like exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day 365 days per year. This is one of the reasons why I am such a large and powerful storm.
All this extra heat is result of human activity — burning fossil fuels and clearing forests. You call these changes human-induced climate change or global warming. I am, in part, a result of human-caused climate change. And so were my 19 brother and sister hurricanes and tropical storms this year.
So what to call us? We need new words. Some call this time of major human impacts on the planet “The Anthropocene”. A big word to describe a big change: the era when humanity is influencing every aspect of life on the planet.
We are the Anthrostorms of the 21st century.
