Back To Wild

The National Hurricane Center from Miami has reported 9 hurricanes and 12 tropical storms in the Atlantic coast in 2008. The forecast does come as a big threat to the coastal areas of United States where according to the meteorological departments claims that the “hurricane season” which lasts from June to end of November is going to be flooded with 6-12 tropical storms and 6-9 hurricanes.

Among the 6-9 hurricanes that are to hit the Atlantic Ocean, about 5 are expected to be highly powerful and destructive. Infact, they are going to be as dangerous to be ranking on Category 3 on a scale of 5, five being the most destructive kind.

The hurricane center collects important information about hurricanes from sources like the “hurricane hunter”, an aircraft which is laden with specially designed equipments that fly over the hurricane collecting data.

Florida is considered to be one of the largest affected areas lying on the east coast of America. Infact, awareness and alerting campaigns go on every year in such vulnerably laid areas. For instance, authorities request people to build stronger homes, learn more about the evacuation plans, pile up emergency kits and participate in training programs that can help teach them how to save pets too.

Experts opine that people living on the US coastline are barely prepared for any disaster. This news therefore comes as a careful reminder of organizing stocks and measures to escape natural calamities like hurricanes storms, etc. Infact, volunteers are being trained to function in the areas which are most likely to be disaster-hit by hurricanes and storms.

Earlier in April, a team led by William Grey revealed that there are going to be as many as 15 tropical storms this year, out of which 8 are going to be powerful and 4 are going to be major ones.

In 2004 and 2005, hurricanes like Katrina, Frances and Jeanna hit the Caribbean coast and the United States coastline which left behind nothing but destruction, death and loss of property.

A British Journal asserts that “warmer seas” are responsible for the dramatic rise of hurricanes in the ocean depths ever since the 1990s. Some names have already been suggested for the forthcoming tropical storms like Vicky, Arthur, Laura, Rene and Teddy.

Insects are the most efficient in adapting in warmer climate because of their highly adaptable organisms, with the maximum diversity in the entire animal kingdom.

There are approximately 925,000 species those have been scientifically described. The actual number may be at least 3 times higher. Basically, their adaptability allows them to cope with several environmental changes, including the present climate’s shifts caused by global warming.

Some Information about the Population Explosion of Insects

Just go through the points mentioned below to understand about the dire consequences of global warming regarding the increasing growth rate of the population of the insects.

• A recent research study conducted at University of Washington implies that global warming boosts the existence of more insects.
• Warmer climates appear to increase the rate of their reproduction as well as population growth, along with the extensive effects on agriculture, conservation and public health.
• A scrutiny of preceding studies has revealed that insects voluntarily settle in to the environment’s temperature. The insects those are living in deserts can easily bear with high temperatures.
• In fact they are less tolerant in cooler climate than mountain insects. Now researchers have discovered that insects those are being adapted to warmer climates, actually have faster rates of population growth.

Check Out the Opinion of a Researcher

“Warmer is better” for insects, said Melanie Frazier, a UW biology doctoral student. “Enhanced population growth rates for butterflies might be a good thing, but enhanced growth rates for mosquito populations is much more dubious,” said Frazier.

“The findings suggest that evolutionary adaptation to climate warming will have profound ecological effects because rates of population growth eventually will alter entire ecosystems,” Frazier added.

The web associations inside the ecosystems are basically very sensitive to the growth rate of the population of the species, which are actually the part of the nutritional chains. Insects can adapt to stove climates using some process of biochemical adaptation or some behavioral shifts, but can also avoid the warmer temperatures that are really moving to the cooler habitats.

Even there are some insects, which may not be able to adapt at all and may disappear. But, the particular group that may win will be suffering population explosions. “No matter which scenario plays out for a given species, local ecosystems will be profoundly altered,” Frazier said.

Already in Siberia and Alaska, the longer summers create demographic explosions in defoliating. Some of the wood eating insects have also led to the destructions in thousands of forest hectares, forest fires as well as damaged millions of dollars.

For a long period of time we are persistently and of course perennially suffering from many things including some dangerous diseases and conditions and above all from global warming that have been caused by polluted air, sometimes directly and some times indirectly.

But this time you would be shocked to learn that the largest rain forest of our planet is suffering for too much clean air and it is in the verge of being completely destroyed naturally.

Some Facts: Really Tough to Digest
We are providing some proven facts that have been derived by some of the famous environmentalists’ and climate scientists’ studies.

• The Amazon that is widely known as the lungs of the earth- can be wiped out within half a century as a dire consequence of too much clean air, as it is suggested by some prominent Brazilian and UK climate scientist in the journal called Nature.
• According to a new research study, there is a connection between dipping sulphur dioxide emissions from increasing sea surface temperatures in the tropical north Atlantic and burning coal, resulting in a heightened risk of drought in the Amazon rainforest.
• The Amazon rainforest consists of around one tenth of the entire carbon stored in the   land ecosystems. It also recycles a great portion of the rainfall that actually falls upon it.
• As a consequence any kind of major variation to its existing vegetation that is generally brought about by deforestation or drought might leave an important as well as largely considerable impact on the global climate system.

Three Noteworthy Points about Amazon Rain Forest
The vast rainforest is very crucial to the Earth’s climate and with the every passing day, this forest is gradually coming under severe threat from the attempts to restrain the pollution, which causes acid rain, warn UK and Brazilian climate scientists. These are three such things that Amazon is able to do:

• The real ‘greenhouse effect’.
• Increase in dust offsets global warming.
• Amazon rainforest ‘could resist climate change’.

The recent research study of trace gases those got trapped in Antarctic ice cores presently provides a practical view of greenhouse gas concentrations as well as is further confirming the connection between the greenhouse gas levels and global warming. The study has been published in the journal Nature.

They also established the fact that there have been concentrations of methane and carbon dioxide during that entire period of time, there have never been concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane as towering as the current levels, said Edward Brook, an associate professor of geosciences at Oregon State University, and author of a Nature commentary on the new studies.

“The fundamental conclusion that today’s concentrations of these greenhouse gases have no past analogue in the ice-core record remains firm,” Brook said in the report. “The remarkably strong correlations of methane and carbon dioxide with temperature reconstructions also stand.”

The latest research on the ice coring in Antarctica has been conducted by the members of the European Project. It extends the data on the trace gases and went back another 150,000 years. It is basically beyond any kind of research studies that has been prior to this, Brook added. Finally, researchers would like to gain some data going back to minimum .5 million years.

The small bubbles of the prehistoric air that has been trapped in the polar ice cores are used to provide with the records of trace gases in the climate at distant points in the past. It actually occurred probably as the consequence of the cyclical changes in Earth’s orbit around the sun.

It is reported that, rising sea levels due to global warming are sure to threaten the lives of Indian Ocean Islands. Scientists have said that the islands of Mafia and Zanzibar in Tanzania are most likely to disappear under sea waters due to global warming.

All the islands of Tanzania mainland coast could go under waters by 2100 following a disastrous rise in sea levels caused by the melting of polar ice, reported scientists who met in Arusha for the launch of the International Year of Planet Earth for Africa.

Adding to it they said that the scenario is “very possible”, as there are number of islands that are submerged by the oceans in the past. Islands that are known to have been sunk in the past include Fungu la Nyani of the Rufiji River and estuary Maziwi, near Pangani in Tanga Region.

At present other islands such as Ras Nungwi located at the northern side of Zanzibar island which has already lost 100 meters of its beach to sea waters, Mbudya and Bongoyo islands near Dar- es- Salaam are under threat of global warming along with Indian Ocean Islands.

Scientists and expert have called for to undertake “bold measures” as the one and only way to save the beautiful islands that are the leading tourist destinations of the world.

According to recent research studies conducted in Russia and America, world’s largest lake that is the Lake Baikal, situated in freezing Siberia is getting the harmful impact of global warming. In spite of its large size as well as unique water circulation this lake is increasingly being a subject of concern of environmentalists.

Basically, this is the reason for what the temperature of the entire region is increasing with the every passing day.

See What Scientists Say

”Warming of this isolated but enormous lake is a clear signal that climate change has affected even the most remote corners of our planet,” said Stephanie Hampton, a leading member of the research team, in their study report published Thursday on the online edition of Global Change Biology journal.

”Our research relies on a 60-year data set, collected in Lake Baikal by three generations of a single family of Siberian scientists,” said another leading author Marianne Moore. The data on Lake Baikal reveals ‘’significant warming of surface waters and long-term changes in the food web of the world’s largest, most ancient lake,” write the researchers in their paper.

This climate change has become very important to monitor since it is the home to 2500animal species and plants. Most importantly the lake contains 20% of the world’s fresh water and it can accommodate all the water. This lake is the deepest and oldest lake in the world.  It is believed that this lake is approximately 25 million years old.

source