If you, like me, love to hear the term ‘climate change’ is mentioned in the news, then you’ve probably had a bit of mixed emotions recently. On one hand, news agencies are beginning to talk and discuss more about climate change and its effects. And On the other, these discussions are becoming more frequent due to the increase in extreme weather conditions around world.
There has been a bit of a change to the debate. From people saying climate change does not exist to people debating if human action is the cause as against changes that are occurring naturally in nature. The positive to take from this is that debates are happening which is always a good sign. There is a massive heat wave that has been moving across many parts of the world. Let us talk about the process of how warm air and cold air affect our weather shall we? Let us note that the changes in weather – and by extension, climate – is a function of the interaction between warm and cold fronts interacting with each other.
As the earth warms up during winter months, warm air is pushed towards the poles displacing the cold air around the poles. This pushes cold air towards areas in North America and Europe where the weather becomes cold resulting in winter. Recently, more warm air has moved towards the north pole displacing more cold air leading to colder winters. A similar phenomenon occurs in spring; more warm air interacts with the now spread cold air causing an increase in rainfall, hurricanes and flooding. In summer, the warm air, still very active, are now much more pronounced resulting in high temperatures and heat waves. Moving to the Autumn months, cold fronts have this time found it hard to have any influence on the weather throughout the year. Grass, land, rivers, and the likes have seen very limited moisture for long periods leading to droughts and forest fires.
If you have been following me, you would have noticed warm air and fronts have been ever present all through. During this time greenhouse gases have pumped into the air. All this means more heat to displace more cold temperatures at the poles during winter months. See a pattern?
With some areas said to be uninhabitable soon, many scientists have been trying to answer one very important question: Have we reached the point of no return?
One of the striking analysis about what we can expect, talked about ice at the poles. They help to secure dangerous methane gases in check but are melting and could possibly cause this gas to leak out. Methane is crucial because is it a poisonous gas. It also has the ability to retain heat at higher rates than carbon currently does. This would lead to even bigger issues than we currently have to deal with.
This article, should hopefully help inform you about the realities of global warming. This should make you want to get even more educated about the state of our planet and how to help protect it. Get up! Get involved!