Global Water Temper: Effects on Hurricanes
Mark B.
English 102
Instructor: Ryan J.
07/28/2018
Every year there are thousands of deaths contributed to human on human violence. These events have sparked movements such as the Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter movements in recent years. These movements starts after the human on human violence with the use of guns. These movements have rallied people from all over the United States to support one if not both of the causes. The idea being that if there are enough people aware of what is going on; the human on human violence will stop. In 2016, the FBI data base reports, there were 15,070 murders committed. If one murder can create movements like the Black Lives Matter, than what can 4654 deaths? Can that go unnoticed? With one hurricane in 2017, 4,654 civilians of Puerto Rico had their lives taken away. It is more difficult to stop a hurricane from impacting human society, then to stop a murder. It is a natural disaster, so maybe it's just nature taking its course. Hurricanes are a deadly force of nature to mess with, but through the actions of humans, Global warming has increased the amount of hurricanes that are seen and the severity of the hurricanes.
Hurricanes aren't seen on a daily basis, but the devastation that one hurricane can cause, can be overwhelming. Some countries are prepared for natural disasters. The buildings in Japan are made to withstand tremendous earthquakes. The cost to the infrastructures to make most if not all the building earthquake proof, is definitely undesirable in a business standpoint; however, the foresight that came into the process has saved countless lives. By no means is it perfect, but action was taken to try and prevent the loss of as many lives as could be. Can measures be taken to help mitigate the effects of hurricanes in the islands in the Caribbean? Hurricanes aren't seen on a daily basis, but the devastation that one hurricane can cause, can be overwhelming. A recent category 4 hurricane that made contact with a United States city, Houston. Hurricane Harvey, caused the deaths of 82 people as reported by Moravic ER (5); however, the impact to the infrastructure of the cities cost billions of dollars to repair. The National Center for Environmental Information has collected data on the cost of the repair and reported 127.2 billion dollars(6). The people that were impacted by Hurricane Harvey, had the ability to drive away because they were not on an island, the death to repair cost ratio is extremely low; however, the death to repair cost ratio will always be extremely low when the repair cost in so high. It is not the first time that Houston has seen a hurricane, so it is known that the infrastructure of Houston needs to be of a hurricane grade.
A recent category 4 hurricane made contact with an island in the Caribbean, Hurricane Maria, and caused the deaths 4645 in a report from Nishant Kishore et al. (7) and had devastating impact to the infrastructure of the cities that were in the hurricane's path. As this was an island, the people of Puerto Rico had to either evacuate the island entirely or try and sit out the storm. Even though Puerto Rico is not a State of the United States of America, it is still a U.S. territory and such under the U.S protection. By not having Puerto Rico properly prepared for hurricanes, the death to repair cost ration of Hurricane Maria's impact on Puerto Rico is much higher than in Houston. The National Center for Environmental Information has collected data on the cost of the repair and reported 91.8 billion dollars(6).
Having two hurricanes that costed the U.S. government over 200 billion dollars in 1 year, is a big impact on the treasury of the U.S. government. The larger problem was the amount of deaths that were associated with the two hurricanes. On the main land, there is the possibility of getting out of the way of the storm and even the probability that the key infrastructures will be returned within days. On the island of Puerto Rico, it took months for the wreckage to be properly cleared and life critical needs of the people to be restored.
Hot water is a key ingredient in the making of a tropical storm as reported by L. Cheng et al (3). It is inevitable that the ocean waters are going to get hot; however, how hot the water gets and for how long is something that humans have impacted. The ozone that surrounds the plant is composed of trioxygen. This structure is considerably unstable and composed of alternating double bonds between the three oxygen to make the most stable compound. The double bonds of Ozone are important because double bonds have the ability to absorb UV light radiation. No all of the UV light radiation is absorbed by the Ozone, thus people in general still have to put on sunscreen. Ozone is not the only inorganic gas that has double bonds. Carbon dioxide also has two stable double bonds. As the amount of carbon dioxide in releasing at an increasing rate over major cities, it is trapping the radiation that is normally bounced off the earth's surface and returned to space. Carbon dioxide is not the only gas that contributes to this problem, but is one of the greenhouse gases that largely contributes to the global warming problem. Global warming is causing the average temperature of the oceans to increase. As the average temperatures of the oceans increase, the time when the water temperature is in range for hurricanes to form also increases. The other downside to warmer water is that while a hurricane travels, it can increase or decrease in rotational speed. The change in rotational speed is largely due to the water temperature that the hurricane passes. If the average temperature of the ocean is increasing, it is easy to predict that the speed of the hurricane will be increasing as well.
A popular argument against global warming, is maybe the sun is just emitting more radiation. A Study by Mike Lockwood et al (4) has shown that there is no known way from the routine changes in the suns energy emittance and the average warming of the oceans. With no known way for the extra solar radiation to transfer to the lower atmosphere, the idea that what is going on is natural, has been debunked. In an assessment of the global warming situation given to Congress(1), the panel of scientist found that the damages done from humans that cause global warming to have a devastating impact such as an increase in greenhouse gases.
The 2018 hurricane season is not predicted to be the worse, but it is substantially worse than average. There is predicted that 3 to 5 major hurricanes will make landfall this hurricane season by both Jillian MacMath(2), and by Tia Ghose(9). With these predictions, the probability of both Houston and Puerto Rico being impacted again is great. If 200 billion dollars was spent on fixing these areas last year and the repairs were not up to hurricane resistant standards, another large amount of money will be spent and even worse, the death toll that might be see could be greater.
Even though the average planet temperature is lower than last year, the prediction that greenhouse gases will continue to increase as shown in the graph created by NASA(10) in consideration and the cleanup of the greenhouse gas problem will take centuries to repair as stated in the report given to Congress (1), is still a relevant issue that needs to be addressed.
In the past few years, many people and many companies have tried to go green. The change that has been made is not easy and its not cheaper then staying non-green; however, it is time to look at the large picture. Hurricanes are not the only natural disaster that is increasing in quantity and quality. The tectonic plates have been shifting and earthquakes are increasing as well as volcanic occurrences as shown by the volcanic activities in Hawaii. As the insentience of earthquakes and volcanic occurrences aren't shown to be temperature dependent, no direct link between human activity in release of Greenhouse gases can be made. Hurricanes on the other hand, are temperature dependent and human have influenced temperature and thus influenced the creation of a human made disaster that can kill thousands. Turning around global warming will be a next to impossible task and it will make really powerful enemies as well as being an economic killer. That is why no one has taken up the movement. How high does the death toll have to get before actions are taken to not only stop the use of fossil fuels in the U.S but not to sell the fossil fuels to other countries?
Work Cited
1. IPCC Fifth Assessment Report
2.Jillian MacMath AccuWeather staff writer,. 2018 Atlantic hurricane outlook: 4 US impacts predicted amid another active season
3.L. Cheng1, J. Zhu1, and R. L. Sriver2. Global representation of tropical cyclone-induced short-term ocean thermal changes using Argo data. Copernicus Publications
4.Mike Lockwood, "Solar Change and Climate: an update in the light of the current exceptional solar minimum," Proceedings of the Royal Society A
5.Moravic ER. Texas officials: Hurricane Harvey death toll at 82, "mass casualties have absolutely not happened." The Washington Post.
6.NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters
7.Nishant Kishore, M.P.H., Domingo Marqués, Ph.D., Ayesha Mahmud, Ph.D., Mathew V. Kiang, M.P.H., Irmary Rodriguez, B.A., Arlan Fuller, J.D., M.A., Peggy Ebner, B.A., Cecilia Sorensen, M.D., Fabio Racy, M.D., Jay Lemery, M.D., Leslie Maas, M.H.S., Jennifer Leaning, M.D., S.M.H., Rafael A. Irizarry, Ph.D., Satchit Balsari, M.D., M.P.H., and Caroline O. Buckee, D.Phil.et al.. Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. The New England Journal of Medicine
8. Sandra May. What Are Hurricanes?, NASA Knows! (Grades K-4) series
9. Tia Ghose, Associate Editor, Hurricane Season 2018: How Long It Lasts and What to Expect
10 climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide
As I read through my paper, I have noticed that in the early parts I had a lot to say and researched the topics well; however, later in the paper, particularly my summary paragraph and the paragraph before it, I noticed that there is a need for more clear sentence structure and idea flow. I also found that I should probably find references that support the ideas of double bonds being able to absorb UV light, as during that paragraph I have mistakenly changed my audience from the average American to someone with a chemistry background. I had an idea about integrating the melting of the polar ice caps and the emergence of the killer whale into the article; however, I thought that might be too big of a stretch from the focus on human lives being lost.
My works cited page is abysmal. I need to not only change the format of some of the citations, but to add hyperlinks to most of them.