How Climate Change Causes Extreme Weather Events
Climate change is responsible for severe weather events across the globe, from flooding to heatwaves, and it is causing major issues for both developed and developing nations across the globe. But just how does climate change cause these weather catastrophes? What follows is a brief overview of how climate pattern shifts are affecting the planet.
Flooding
Climate change causes flooding in several ways. First, rising temperatures due to global warming melt polar ice caps, resulting in an increase in sea levels. This results in coastal flooding. However, climate change can also cause flooding as a result of extreme weather events.
Warmer air is able to contain far more water vapor than colder air. Warm air sucks air in, and cold air pushes it out, which is why regionsexperience dryness in warmer climates, and condensation in colder climates. Precipitation begins once that moisture holding air is oversaturated with water. Due to changing wind patterns, air is not always in the same place as where it picked up its moisture.
As air shifts and moves around the globe, warmer air holding quite a bit of moisture is misplaced over areas that do not usually experience that much precipitation, and thus do not have the necessary infrastructure or landscape to deal with it. All it takes is a little push, absorbing a small amount of additional moisture, to cause severe precipitation events, resulting in flooding.
Heatwaves
Climate change is also causing record-breaking heat waves in abnormal areas that do not have the infrastructure to defend against extreme heat. Air is heated up at different rates and temperatures around the world due to geography, such as land area, water area, and ecological makeup. Due to climate change, abnormal weather patterns and atmospheric conditions — including pressure and temperature — are emerging, causing warmer air to be shifted to places where it shouldn’t be, like Seattle in 2021.
Snow Storms
Climate change is causing rapid temperature increase in the atmosphere across the globe. Consequently, more water is being evaporated, increasing the water content in certain parts of the atmosphere. This means that in areas cold enough to freeze precipitation into snow, snow storms have a significantly increased amount of snow content.
Hurricanes
Climate change increases the intensity of hurricanes. Due to warmer atmospheric temperatures, higher rates of evaporation occur. As hurricanes travel across warming regions, they come into contact with air containing more moisture. When these hurricanes hit land, they are subsequently much larger, containing more water content, resulting in heavier floods and rainfall.
Climate change is quickly changing the weather landscape of our world. It is critical to prevent further global warming to protect areas that do not have the ability or infrastructure to withstand extreme weather events, and to invest in climate resilience efforts to safeguard communities and habitats that aren’t used to or prepared for these dramatic climate shifts.