Major impacts of climate change in North America include the following. Due to sea level rise, increase in inundations, and storm surge flooding, shoreline erosion will be prominent. This will affect the people living in the coastal and the coastal ecosystems like salt marshes. Wildfire and insect outbreaks have been increasing and are likely to intensify. Increased risk of deaths due to heat waves, water-borne diseases, and degraded water...
Impacts in South America
South America has been experiencing several unprecedented weather-related events in the recent past, such as Intense rainfall in Venezuela (1999, 2005) Flooding in the Argentine Pampas (2000–02) Amazon drought (2005) in Brazil Hailstorms in Bolivia (2002) and Greater Buenos Aires area (2006) The devastating hurricane Katrina in 2004 Studies have shown that there has been an increased rainfall in south-eastern Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, the...
Continental Drift
Millions of years ago, all the continents were merged in one large land mass known as Pangea. This was about 250 million years ago. They gradually began to drift apart and formed the separate continents that we are familiar with today. The formation of separate continental land masses changed the flow of ocean currents and winds, and isolated Antarctica. This continental drift leads to climate change, as it brings about a change in the...
Types of Climate Variation
Climate, although very slowly, keeps evolving. There are many causes behind variation in climate. Climate variations can be categorized into two broad contexts. Natural Climate Variation: There are several natural causes that force climate to change across time and scale. It can be further drilled down into the following categories. Natural Forcings of the Climate System The Sun and the Global Energy Balance Radiative Forcing Greenhouse Effect...
Weather and Climate
Ever wondered… What is weather? What is climate? Can we use the terms ‘climate’ and ‘weather’ interchangeably? Why do seasons change? Why is it that we have winters in United States during Christmas and summers in Australia during the same time?Let us watch this video by NASA and explore the answers.From this video, we can conclude that Weather is the fluctuating state of the atmosphere around us, characterized by...