In this article, we will discuss Global Climate Change (Important Facts). So, let’s get started.
The Climate Change
- Floods in the Himalayan Region: The Himalayan region has about 15,000 glaciers, which are retreating at a rate of 100 to 200 feet per decade.
- The melting of the Himalayan glaciers that prompted the floods and landslides in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand have the fingerprints of global warming.
- In 2013, glacial flooding in Kedarnath caused over 6,000 deaths during the monsoon months.
- Other Events: In 2003, the European heat wave killed over 70,000 people.
- The years 2015-19 have globally been the warmest years on record.
- The Amazon fire of 2019, the bush fires of 2019-20 in Australia are some of the most dangerous impacts of changing climate.
- Global Emission: The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Emissions Gap Report 2020 showed that the year 2020 set new records in terms of rise in extreme weather events, including wildfires and hurricanes, and in the melting of glaciers and ice at both poles.
- According to the report, despite a brief dip in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions caused by the Pandemic, the world is still heading for a temperature rise in excess of 3°C this century; far beyond the 2015 Paris Agreement goals.
- Recently, Texas, US has been hit by extremely cold weather leading to strong wind storms in the state.
- The winter storm has killed 21 people and left around 4.4 million without power.
- The brutal cold has engulfed vast swaths of the United States, shuttering Covid-19 inoculation centers and hindering vaccine supplies.
- The double-digit negative temperatures (temperatures have fallen as low as -14°C) are connected to Arctic-peninsula warming.
- Usually, there is a collection of winds around the Arctic keeping the cold locked far to the north, known as Polar Vortex.
- But global warming has caused gaps in these protective winds, allowing intensely cold air to move south: the phenomenon is accelerating.
