Global Warming
May Spawn
More
Super-Storms
By Stephen Leahy
22 September, 2004
Inter Press Service
Hurricane
Ivan, the incredibly powerful storm that killed at least 120 people
in the Caribbean and southern United States, may be a harbinger of the
Earth's hotter future, say experts.
Despite the recent
destructive series of hurricanes and tornadoes, global warming is off
the radar screen of the U.S. presidential election campaign.
Large parts of the world's oceans are approaching 27 degrees C or warmer
during the summer, greatly increasing the odds of major storms, McCarthy
told IPS.
When water reaches
such temperatures, more of it evaporates, priming hurricane or cyclone
formation. Once born, a hurricane needs only warm water to build and
maintain its strength and intensity.
Over the last 100
years, the Earth has warmed by about .6 degrees C, according to the
2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
an international scientific body that studies the relationship between
human activity and global warming.
The IPCC report
was based on research by more than 2,500 scientists from about 100 countries
who determined that emissions of gases such as carbon dioxide act as
a blanket that prevents much of the sun's energy from dissipating into
space.
Much of the extra
energy from this "greenhouse effect" is being absorbed by
the oceans.
The "proof"
that the oceans are warming is the fact that global sea levels have
risen 3.1 cm in the past 10 years, said Kevin Trenberth, head of the
Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research
in Boulder, Colorado.
Water expands when
heated, and sea levels are expected to continue rising by as much as
50 cm by 2100.
While the warming
of the oceans is not uniform -- the North Pacific and North Atlantic
are a bit cooler -- the hurricane-producing mid-Atlantic and Caribbean
oceans have warmed significantly.
"Global warming
is creating conditions that are more favorable for hurricanes to develop
and be more severe," said Trenberth.
Will that result
in more Category 4 or 5 storms like Ivan?
"That's the
logical conclusion, although it may be somewhat controversial,"
he said.
Before it struck
Cuba a glancing blow, Ivan was a Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale,
which rates hurricanes from 1 to 5 according to wind speeds and destructive
potential. Category 5 hurricanes have winds that blow continuously above
250 kilometers an hour. Ivan's gusts topped 320 kilometers an hour at
times, making it the sixth most powerful hurricane on record for the
Atlantic Basin.
Hurricane Ivan's
12-day rampage killed 70 people in the Caribbean and 50 in the United
States. It will be some time before the full extent of the damage is
known, but some estimates put it at 10 billion dollars for the United
States alone.
As emissions of
greenhouse gases continue to trap more and more of the sun's energy,
that energy has to be dissipated, resulting in stronger storms, more
intense precipitation and higher winds, says McMcarthy.
However, the statistical
record of hurricanes hitting the U.S. shows a decrease in the past 50
years.
Most hurricanes
do not strike land, McCarthy points out, and up until the past 25 years,
with the advent of satellite tracking, there was scant data on the storms.
But there is abundant
evidence of an unprecedented number of severe weather events in the
past decade, McCarthy says. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch killed nearly 20,000
people in Central America, and more than 4,000 people died during disastrous
flooding in China. Bangladesh suffered some of its worst floods ever
the following year, as did Venezuela. Europe was hit with record floods
in 2002, and then a record heat wave in 2003.
More recently, Brazil
was struck by the first-ever recorded hurricane in the South Atlantic
last March.
"Weather records
are being set all the time now. We're in an era of unprecedented extreme
weather events," McCarthy said.
Historical weather
patterns are becoming less useful for predicting the future conditions
because global warming is changing ocean and atmospheric conditions.
"In 30 to 50
years' time, the Earth's weather generating system will be entirely
different," he predicted.
What hasn't changed
in the United States is the lack of concern about climate change, said
Ross Gelbspan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of two books
on global warming, most recently one titled: "Boiling Point: How
Politicians, Big Oil And Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling
the Climate Crisis -- And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster."
Sharp reductions
of emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide on the order of
70 percent are urgently needed to minimize the impacts, Gelbspan said.
But despite the
recent destructive series of hurricanes and tornadoes, global warming
is off the radar screen of the U.S. presidential election campaign,
he said.
Gelbspan is not
surprised at this, given the power and influence of the fossil fuel
lobby in Washington, which he outlines in great detail in his book.
"America's
oil and coal industries receive more than 20 billion dollars a year
in subsidies," he said. "Imagine what could be done if that
money was invested in green energy."
© 2004 IPS
- Inter Press Service