Typhoon Ondoy A Climate Change Effect

Typhoon Ondoy is just one of many effects of natural climate change. Typhoon Ondoy's wrath is devastating. Killing so many people and ruining houses, businesses and life.

Residents wait for rescuers at a building during flooding caused by Typhoon Ketsana in Cainta Rizal, east of Manila September 27, 2009. (REUTERS/Erik de Castro) Photo: Boston.com

Here is a news story about how, Typhoon Ondoy and Climate Change should be acted upon.

'Ondoy damage shows need to act on climate change'

Storm becomes a focus of U.N. climate talks

BANGKOK - The Philippines urged rich nations at U.N. climate talks on Wednesday to toughen emissions cuts, saying the typhoon that hit the country this week was a taste of future effects of climate change on poor nations.

Typhoon Ketsana (RP local name: Ondoy) killed 246 people and triggered widespread flooding in the capital Manila.

The storm, which has also killed 32 in Vietnam, dumped a month's worth of rain in 24 hours in Manila, overwhelming rescue services.

Residents have been scathing in their criticism of the government's disaster response in the crowded city of 15 million where sewers are notoriously blocked by rubbish.

The storm has become a focus of marathon climate talks in Bangkok this week, with developing nations and green groups saying it is an example of the type of climate disaster poor nations could face in a warmer world.

"Ketsana is clearly a manifestation of the consequences of global inaction in addressing the immediate impacts of creeping climate change," chief Philippine climate negotiator Heherson Alvarez told reporters.

He said rich nations must act urgently "to moderate these storms and spare the whole world from the impoverishing and devasting impacts of climate change".

Delegates from about 180 countries are meeting in the Thai capital trying to narrow differences on emissions reduction targets, climate finance and transfer of clean-energy technology before a December deadline to seal a tougher pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

"Unless we have deep and early cuts -- we have asked for cuts of 30 to 40 percent -- it will continue to deliver these destructive typhoons," he said.

The U.N. climate panel says rich nations need to cut their emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to help limit the rise in planet-warming carbon dioxide levels. Pledges by most rich nations to date fall below that recommendation.

"Terrible warning"

Developing countries are demanding rich nations pay for steps to help them adapt to predicted rising seas, increases in the intensity of storms, greater extremes of floods and droughts and changing river flows from melting glaciers.

They say rich nations are responsible for the bulk of mankind's greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere over the past two centuries and largely to blame for climate change impacts to date.

"What happened in the Philippines is a terrible warning of what we might be experiencing in the future if action is not taken immediately," said Kim Carstensen, head of conservation group WWF's global climate initiative.

"The tragic events in the Philippines are a reminder for all negotiators here in Bangkok," he added.

Alvarez said the government was caught off-guard.

"It was an unusual event because the velocity of the storm was fairly mild compared to the aggressive storms that we have been experiencing."

About 20 typhoons hit the Philippines annually and Alvarez said wind speeds have increased over the past 30 years.

"It's been ranging initially about 30 years ago, 100 kilometre-per-hour storms. It's been growing in aggressiveness from 100 to 150 and of late, the storms have been close to 200 kilometre per hour."

Despite the relatively mild velocity of Ketsana it carried heavy rains. Experts say more intense rains are an expected effect of global warming.

by David Fogarty and Thin Lei Win, Reuters via abs-cbnnews.com

And more of Typhoon Ondoy and Natural Climate Change news, photos and articles below.
Ondoy IS climate change
‘Ondoy’ a preview of more disasters to come
Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy) - The Big Picture

If you wan't to add your own link or story, please leave it at the comment section.

Causes Of Natural Climate Change In The Past

In this post, I will discuss about the natural climate change contributors in the past, and still contributing big nowadays. This is just a summary post of global warming and natural climate change in the past article.

Solar activity
Solar variations have been the major driver of climate change over the past 10,000 years. Similarly, solar activity was higher during the Medieval Warm Period.
However, the correlation between solar activity and global temperatures ended around 1975. At that point, temperatures started rising while solar activity stayed level. This led a team of scientists from Finland and Germany to conclude "during these last 30 years the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have another source." More on the sun & global warming.

Milankovitch cycles
Earth's climate undergoes 120,000 year cycles of ice ages broken by short warm periods called interglacials. The cycle is driven by Milankovitch cycles. Long term changes in the Earth's orbit trigger an initial warming which warms the oceans and melts ice sheets - this releases CO2. The extra CO2 in the atmosphere causes further warming leading to interglacials ending the ice ages.
The current trend of the Milankovitch cycle is a gradual cooling down towards an ice age.

Volcanoes
Volcanic eruptions spew sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere which has a cooling effect on global temperatures. These aerosols reflect incoming sunlight, causing a 'global dimming' effect. Strong volcanic activity exacerbated the Little Ice Age in the 1800's.

Summary
The usual suspects in natural climate change - solar variations, volcanoes, Milankovitch cycles - are all conspicuous in their absence over the past 3 decades of warming. This doesn't mean by itself that CO2 is the main cause of current global warming - you don't prove anthropogenic warming by eliminating all other options. But the primary causes of commonly cited climate change in the past have played little part in the current warming trend.
As for CO2, empirical observations show that CO2 has a warming effect as a greenhouse gas, CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere and the expected warming you would get from greenhouse gases is occurring.

Further explanation and information will be posted here. I suggest that you stay tuned for more updates. Meanwhile, read the whole article prior to this post at global warming and natural climate change in the past webpage.

Major Causes of Climate Change

As previously stated, causes of climate change can be categorized in two. The natural and human causes. Let us take a look on each of them.

Natural Causes or Contributors

Some of the major contributors on these natural causes are continental drift, volcanoes, ocean currents, the earth's tilt, and comets and meteorites.

This drift also had an impact on the climate because it changed the physical features of the landmass, their position and the position of water bodies. The separation of the landmasses changed the flow of ocean currents and winds, which affected the climate.

Volcano Eruptions
When a volcano erupts it throws out large volumes of sulphur dioxide (SO2), water vapour, dust, and ash into the atmosphere. Millions of tones of sulphur dioxide gas can reach the upper levels of the atmosphere (called the stratosphere) from a major eruption. The gases and dust particles partially block the incoming rays of the sun, leading to cooling. Sulphur dioxide combines with water to form tiny droplets of sulphuric acid. Movement of aerosols north and south is always much slower.

As an example, Mount Pinatubo, in the Philippine islands erupted in April 1991 emitting thousands of tones of gases into the atmosphere. Volcanic eruptions of this magnitude can reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, lowering temperatures in the lower levels of the atmosphere (called the troposphere), and changing atmospheric circulation patterns. Significant weather-related disruptions occurred in New England and in Western Europe with killing summer frosts in the United States and Canada.

Earth's Movement
The earth makes one full orbit around the sun each year. In the other half when it is winter, the earth is tilted away from the sun. Changes in the tilt of the earth can affect the severity of the seasons - more tilt means warmer summers and colder winters; less tilt means cooler summers and milder winters.

Body of Water Currents
The oceans are a major component of the climate system. They cover about 71% of the Earth and absorb about twice as much of the sun's radiation as the atmosphere or the land surface.

Winds push horizontally against the sea surface and drive ocean current patterns.
Certain parts of the world are influenced by ocean currents more than others. The coast of Peru and other adjoining regions are directly influenced by the Humboldt current that flows along the coastline of Peru. The El Niño event in the Pacific Ocean can affect climatic conditions all over the world.

Another region that is strongly influenced by ocean currents is the North Atlantic. If we compare places at the same latitude in Europe and North America the effect is immediately obvious. The rest of the Arctic Ocean, even though it is much further south, remains frozen.

Human causes

The Greenhouse Effect
Carbon dioxide is undoubtedly, the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Changes in land use pattern, deforestation, land clearing, agriculture, and other activities have all led to a rise in the emission of carbon dioxide.

Methane is another important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Methane is also released from rice or paddy fields that are flooded during the sowing and maturing periods. When soil is covered with water it becomes anaerobic or lacking in oxygen. Under such conditions, methane-producing bacteria and other organisms decompose organic matter in the soil to form methane. China and India, between them, have 80-90% of the world's rice-growing areas.

Humans Daily Contributions
All of us in our daily lives contribute our bit to this change in the climate. All our gadgets run on electricity generated mainly from thermal power plants. These thermal power plants are run on fossil fuels (mostly coal) and are responsible for the emission of huge amounts of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.

- We generate large quantities of waste in the form of plastics that remain in the environment for many years and cause damage.
- Timber is used in large quantities for construction of houses, which means that large areas of forest have to be cut down.

Because the land area available for agriculture is limited (and in fact, is actually shrinking as a result of ecological degradation!), high-yielding varieties of crop are being grown to increase the agricultural output from a given area of land. Pollution also results from the run-off of fertilizer into water bodies.

We must act now to be able to limit and decrease this climate change causes. I know we can’t stop the natural ones but the human causes; I think we can do something about it. Besides, we humans are the high contributors and will be highly affected by this climate change.