Flooding caused by Cyclone Gabriel in Awatoto, near the city of Napier. – new zealand
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A few weeks ago I visited an experiment in a forest in the south of England. In this experiment, we are trying to make young trees age faster than they are. While I was there, I saw the aftermath of his year-old event. At that time, Britain was hit by three consecutive Atlantic storms in just a few days. One of the victims of that triple whammy was a large beech tree in the forest.
The arrival of three severe storms within a week is called a compound disaster. Extreme events occur simultaneously or one after the other, before recovering from the previous storm. It was also a cascading disaster where one extreme event triggered another. Storm Eunice, which made landfall in the UK on 18 February 2022, the day after Storm Dudley, brought about extended power outages for over one million homes, closed schools and businesses, and shut down the UK transport system for several days. Confused. When Storm Franklin arrived three days after him, Eunice’s decontamination efforts were hampered, causing massive flooding.
All over the world, compound and chain disasters are becoming more common as the climate warms. Over the past two years, eastern Australia has battled a series of devastating floods on the heels of record drought, heat and wildfires in 2019 and 2020. A few days later, more rain. In 2021, parts of Louisiana in the United States were hit by her two hurricanes, Ida and Nicholas, in just two weeks. The list goes on.
Of course, compound disasters and chain disasters are nothing new. In 1954, before climate change took hold, the northeastern United States coast was hit by two hurricanes, Carol and Edna, in her 12 days, killing 80 people, causing flooding and an estimated $500 million in damage. has occurred. But they are becoming more and more frequent.
There is a notion that multiple, cascading disasters are causing a mental health crisis
Such disasters are “the new normal,” Susan Cutter of the University of South Carolina said in a keynote address at a recent National Academy of Sciences (NAS) conference on the topic. A subsequent report described the “new normal” in harsh terms, stating: opportunity for recovery.”
Not everything is climate related. All recent examples have occurred against the backdrop of another disaster: the covid-19 pandemic. Some involve natural disasters encountering vulnerable infrastructure, such as the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that flooded the Fukushima nuclear power plant and caused a meltdown there.
You can expect more. Hurricanes are becoming more common along the US East Coast and Gulf Coast, with successive hurricanes hitting the same location within 15 days of her, according to a recent paper. In 100 years he will be one event, and at the end of the 20th century he will be one in two years.
Another future risk is a type of event called a “tropical cyclone-fatal thermal compound hazard”, in which a cyclone or hurricane knocks out power supplies and is quickly followed by a heat wave. With air conditioning not working, millions of people are exposed to potentially lethal heat he exceeds 40°C (104°F). According to Tom Matthews of King’s College London, such events used to be “very rare”. Between 1979 and 2017 he was only recorded four times, all in the sparsely populated northwestern part of Australia. But climate models suggest they will become more common, with millions of people at risk when temperatures drop below 2 degrees Celsius once every three years. will be
To me, this is like a tipping point, an irreversible change in the earth’s natural systems caused by climate collapse. If so, it’s definitely the first one we crossed, but there are many others nearby. By definition, disasters affect people. Composites and cascades have a greater impact than either of those elements alone. There is even an emerging theory that compound and cascading disasters are causing mental health crises.
If anything can be done, is there anything we can do? We can’t limit warming to the current level, it won’t happen, but it won’t be much. NAS says there are two options. Either make the disaster response system work stronger and faster, or completely redesign the system to deal with such events. But you don’t have much time to waste. According to NAS, the new standard is “an unacceptable situation.” Storm clouds are gathering.
Graham’s week
what i am reading
I am still plowing in the light of grief.The latest in the pile is state of distrust By Juliet Rosenfeld.
what i see
New season of ITV’s cold case drama Unforgettable.
what i’m working on
Some grief of my own lit up.
topic:
