Climate Change and Catastrophies

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Climate Change and Catastrophies

• Julia Rubio Arend
• Paloma Guitart Ferrer

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Tsunamis generated by

• Shallow earthquakes, requiring some kind of
  sudden displacement of seawater,
• Submarine landslides and volcanic eruptions.

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Generated in

• 85 of the tsunamis have been observed in the
  Pacific Ocean.
• South America, Aleutian Islands, the Gulf of
  Alaska, the Kuril Kamchatka area and Northern
  Japan.

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Why is a tsunami a hazard?

• Since it's not just one wave but a series of
  waves, as waves do come in, you've got water,
  rocks, houses, cars, a lot of debris, and those
  are the things that are causing death and damage.
• These waves can break utility lines, and fires
  can brake out.
• For example, a wave can take up to 8 or 9 hours
  across the Indian Ocean, and in the case of the
  Pacific, upwards of a day from Chile to Japan.

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TSUNAMI

• Happened in Southeast Asia,
• The 26th of December of 2004

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Initial reports

• 3.000 people died in Sri Lanka,
• 2,300 in India,
• 2,000 in Indonesia,
• 289 in Thailand,
• 42 in Malaysia,
• 8 in Somalia,
• 2 in Bangladesh

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Some initial titles in the media

• The deads raise 150,000
• The number could arrive at something as
  horrifying as 600.000.
• Floods blocked the routes of access to the
  populated centers and forced to evacuate 2000
  people.
• There are five million people in the zones of the
  disaster that confront serious difficulties to
  obtain foods and sweet water.
• Danger of epidemics.
• Distribution of first aids has been delayed, what
  causes its accumulation in airports and harbours.

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• "We cried, we lamented ourselves our hearts
  withdraw when seeing thousand of victims thrown
  throughout ", (President of Indonesia, Susilo
  Bambang Yudhoyono)
• Between the deceaseds there are many tourists who
  spent their Christmas holidays there, although
  exact numbers cannot be given.
• We have not seen as much panic from the disaster
  of the World Trade Center" the 11 of September of
  2001 (British police special service)

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ALERT OF WAVES SYSTEM

• The warning system is designed to warn the
  nations that can be potentially whiped by
  destructive waves, in a period of three to 14
  hours.
• The catastrophic number of dead in Asia because
  of gigantic waves could have been smaller if
  India and Sri Lanka belonged to a system of
  international alert designed to warn on possible
  swells.

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Katrina Hurricane

• Katrina was the costliest and one of the five
  deadliest hurricanes to ever strike the United
  States.

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Synoptic History

• Katrina first made landfall as a Category 1
  hurricane just north of Miami, Florida, on 24
  August.
• It debilitated and became a tropical storm on 26
  August.
• It gained force in gulf of Mexico and became a
  hurricane of category 5 with minimum central
  pressure of 902 mb and 280 kms/h winds.

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• It made the second landfall as a Category 3 storm
  on the morning of August 29 near Buras-Triumph,
  Louisiana with 241 kms/h winds and a central
  pressure of 920 mbar.
• It dissipated on 31 August

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Minimum central pressure curve, 23-30 August
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Wind speed curve, 23-30 August
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Casualty and Damage

• Fatalities directly or indirectly related to
  Katrina 1336
• Fatalities directly related to Katrina 1200

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• States damaged Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida,
  Georgia and Alabama.
• Most of this fatalities occurred in Louisiana and
  in Mississippi.
• Number of direct fatalities is uncertain because
  bodies still being found, many not yet been
  identified and the causes of death remain under
  investigation.

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Flood, strong winds and tornados caused

• workplaces, homes, historical buildings,
  agricultural facilities, transportation arteries,
  bridges, were destroyed
• The entire coastal communities were obliterated
• three million people without electricity several
  weeks
• Oil and gas industry were affected

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Consequences

• Thousands of lost jobs and millions of dollars.
• Many of evacuees have not returned home,
  producing a shortage of workers
• Beach erosion along the tourism-dependent coasts
  of Mississippi and Alabama.
• A significant percentage of United States oil
  refining capacity was disrupted.
• Could take years to completely rebuild.

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Prevention and evacuation

• A precarius evacuation plan that mention use of
  school buses for evacuation when it is impossible
  find their own way out of the city.
• New Orleans has one of the highest poverty rates
  in the United States.
• Not sufficient provisions to evacuate the
  homeless, the poor, the elderly, the infirm, or
  the car-less households.
• Critics say that the response was slow because
  those most affected are poor.

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What scientifics sayabout climate change and its
correlation with catastrophes hurricanes
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• K. Emanuel the potential hurricane
  destructiveness "is highly correlated with
  tropical sea surface temperature and global
  warming."

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A measure of the Atlantic PDI compared to
September SST

• There is an obvious strong relationship between
  the two series.
• The large upswing in the last decade is
  unprecedented, and reflects the effect of global
  warming.

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Pacific PDI compared to July- November average SST

• As in the Atlantic, there are strongly
  correlated.
• Some of the interdecadal variability is
  associates with El niño.
• The upswing in SST since around 1975 is unusual.

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• P.J. Webster While the number of cyclones
  decreased overall, the number of very strong
  cyclones increased.

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Summer SST by ocean basin during 35 years

• NATL North Atlantic Ocean
• WPAC Western Pacific Ocean
• EPAC East Pacific Ocean
• SPAC Southwest Pacific Ocean
• NIO North Indian Ocean
• SIO South Indian Ocean
• An evident increase of the SST is observed

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• Number of hurricanes of categories 4 and 5 has
  increased during the last years, as the ones of
  categories 1, 2 and 3 decreases

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Conclusion of Emanuel and Webster

• The sea surface temperature is considered as a
  key in the development of cyclones. The question
  then becomes what caused the observed increase
  in sea surface temperatures?
• Both, a natural variation (such as the AMO) and
  global warming could have made contributions to
  the warming of the tropical Atlantic over the
  past decades, but an exact attribution is so far
  impossible to make.

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Against those theories

• The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
  Administration says that "it is highly unlikely
  that global warming has (or will) contribute to a
  drastic change in the number or intensity of
  hurricanes."

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• Why has SST increased in the tropics?
• Due to a natural cycle (Atlantic Multidecadal
  Oscillation), because the contribution of
  anthropogenic greenhause gases to tropical SST
  warming is very small in the global mean SST
  changes.

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Other catastrophes

• Sea level increase
• Fusion of glaciers in mountains
• Reduction of the ice masses thickness in the
  poles
• Increase of extreme climatic events
• Lose of colour and death of chorales
• Defrosting of permafrost in Alaska and Siberia
• Desertification and fresh water shortage