Change for the worse
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- 09 / 21 / 2008
That effect is natural, but has sped up with the indiscriminate exploitation of gases that accumulate in the atmosphere, which causes different types of damage, such as the destruction of the ozone layer, high temperatures and the development of other phenomena like hurricanes.
Scientists have not reached an agreement on the issue, but many of them denounce it and many others are accepting the fact. For instance, they concluded that today there is twice the amount of hurricanes than 100 years ago.
It was also proved that the last 10 years were the hottest in the Northern hemisphere for 1 300 years.
Now with Ike, a 62 year-old American citizen from Galveston stated: “I have never seen such a hurricane. The damage will exceed everything we can imagine”. And that kind of statement is also heard from 84 year-old Cubans during the hit of Gustav, and the common phrase is “these have been the worst…”
It is not about a “tremendista” idea for the numerous damages, nor the influence for the recent facts, the entire Caribbean thinks that way and so do it the most advance laboratories.
In Paso Real de San Diego, Pinar del Río, Gustav roared with gusts of over 340 Km/h; during the trace of Ike the gusts reached 190 Km/h, and in Los Palacios sustained winds of 100 kilometers were recorded.
According to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the evidence of the climate change of the Earth compels the arctic ice melting, a variation of the precipitation and evaporation patterns, and the contamination of the clouds.
The Arctic ice cores suffered during 2007 a record melting, and the scientists discovered that the total cloud layer over the area was 16 % smaller than in 2006.
That caused a 2,4 degrees rise of the water temperature, enough heat to melt 0,3 meters of sea ice.
The extreme atmospheric events are becoming more regular so as to consider them casual and that makes the analysts think that things are not right, nevertheless the incredulous must know that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse effect gas, is the highest of the last 650.000 years and 35 percent higher than before the Industrial Revolution.
This century will be crucial, since in the last one the air temperature rose near five degrees, that is to say, 10 times the average temperature of the world surface. In the Russian Arctic zone, buildings are collapsing since the underground permafrost is melting.
Since the late 60s, the snow cover has decreased about 10 percent in the northern hemisphere. The average duration of the snow layer in lakes and rivers was apparently reduced to one or two weeks in the 20th century.
The strongest hurricanes become even more violent due to climate change and to the high temperatures of the oceans. A statistical analysis based on satellite data of the past 25 years, proves that.
Those results show that there is a rise in the wind speeds of the cyclones originated in tropical waters, where the sea temperature is higher. This pattern in cyclones, hurricanes or typhoons “is closely related to temperature”, said the scientists.
Specialists identified three different periods since 1900 in which the frequency of hurricanes and tropical storms increased drastically, keeping a rising level.
During the first period, between 1900 and 1930, there were six tropical storms, four of which became hurricanes.
In the second, between 1930 and 1940, ten tropical storms were registered, five of them hurricanes.
Last, between 1995 and 2005, there were 15 tropical storms; eight of them reach the hurricane category.
Apparently, it is irrefutable that the climate change has to do with the recent phenomena that struck us, anyway we cannot move from this island, but we do can become prepare to reduce the damage and move forward.
(Guerrillero.co.cu)
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