Climate Change and Its Effects on White Water Rafting

As the World Bank and the United Nations (2010) point out, “Climate-related hazards (“extreme events”) have resulted in an average of $59 billion a year in global damages” (p.174). Climate chance forces emergency planers to not only address current increased risk, but it also requires significant long-term plaining as the problem increases in magnitude. As an example, places like Florida will not only need to contend with a longer and stronger hurricane season, but increased sea levels as well. In the short term, the effects of climate change can have secondary effects. Things like droughts create secondary problems like social and economic disruptions (World Bank & United Nations, 2010, p. 182). This is the case in California where droughts are causing economic problems in the states agricultural sector and an increase in forest fires.

But the most common one is flooding. Most of the worst floods in Canada happen in the Prairies. For example the southern Alberta flood started on June 19 2013 with heavy rainfall and ended June 28 2013. There were 100,000 people evacuated from their homes and 4 people died from this tragic natural disaster. The flooding was the most expensive natural disaster ever in Canada. Insurance had to pay 1.7 billion dollars and an estimated 2.2 billion in cost. 5 ways to prepare for this natural disaster are to put weather protection sealant around basement windows and the base of around-level doors, install the drainage for downspouts a sufficient distance from your residence to ensure that water moves away from the building, consider installing a sump pump and zero reverse flow valves in the basement floor drains, do not store your important documents in the basement and make sure you have food and water because you don’t know how long a flood could go

This problem could mark either the end of human civilizations or mark the beginning of the next era of human development. It would decide on our species survival, whether there will be another mass extinction like the one 65 million years ago. The question is “How might the breaking up and melting of continental ice in Greenland and the Antarctic affect Canada’s coastline?”. In the following sections, we have gathered an abundance of information from a variety of sources from which we will discuss, and analyze. We will find out how this data can help us understand the effect of melting glaciers on Canada’s coastline, as well as how and what we could do to stop or slow it down.

Australia’s ski industry is significant challenged by the effects climate change on snow cover. Declining of snow cover, amongst numerous issues (Figure 1), limits the growth of the ski industry. Snow cover is based on the concept of accumulation and ablation (Thompson, 2012). The drivers of snow accumulating and ablation are solar radiation and warmer temperatures from climate change. Increased temperature results in

The issue is the startling climate changes that have and undoubtedly continue to occur in Northern Canada. Climate changes are known as weather conditions such as temperature, winds, precipitation, and others that have been affected over a period of time (GOC, n.d.). The concern with this is that the earth’s climate has a balance between energy that is received and energy that being dispatched. The intent is to maintain regulated temperatures; instead the issue that has occurred is disturbances between these two balances (GOC, n.d.). Changes in the climate affects the air temperature and precipitation, the cryosphere, freshwater resources, and ocean climate (Bush, Loder, James, Mortsch, & Cohen, 2014).There are however

It is important to know what is endangering Canada, however it is even more vital to understand the future of Canada’s waters due to global warming and pollution. The World Bank reported that the

The intensity, frequency, and duration of North Atlantic hurricanes, as well as the frequency of category 4 and 5 hurricanes, have all increased since the early 1980s (Bell 2012). The increase in hurricanes can be linked to higher sea surface temperatures caused by multiple outside sources. Human induced emissions of heat-trapping gases and particulate pollution are two of the possible sources that are affecting the sea surface temperature. Humans are the main contributor contributing to climate change and global warming, but most seem not to care. Not only is the amount of hurricanes increasing, but heat waves are increasing and intensifying in some western parts of the country. Heat waves have become more frequent across The United States in recent decades. Western regions are setting records for numbers of heat waves and droughts in the 2000s. Data collected suggests that the droughts over the last decade in the West represent the driest conditions in the last 800 years (Vose 2005). With varying weather all over the country, the real estate market is beginning to be affected as well. Popular ski capitals will no longer have their icy slopes and eventually the popular beaches will be too hot to visit or will not have any beach left, causing drops in vacation rentals and permanent housing

Mackenzie River Basin has been steadily warming over the last 3 decades and changes due to global warming are rippling through the entire ecosystem. The indigenous communities that live in the basin and depend on the natural resources are particularly vulnerable to these changes. Some the changes that are detrimental to these communities include the increases in forest fires, increase of permafrost melting and the decrease of water in the basin. The increase

On Saturday December 21st 2013 a powerful storm struck Southern Ontario, leaving the streets and sidewalks under a thick blanket of snow. Ice covered covered the ground in thick sheets near Lake Ontario and some parts in Quebec. In Fredricton they received freezing rain. This storm greatly affected many parts of Southern Canada and some parts of the United States. In this essay I will be focussing only on the areas in Canada that it affected. I will be discussing  the different types of precipitation that fell, the areas where the storm attacked and the dangers it caused to many lives, and the impact this storm had on transportation routes and the power grid. Finally, I will be comparing how the different types of tree vegetation were able

Further, analyze and understand the adequacy of the measures taken to adapt future climate change induced hazard risks. I have developed my capacity by doing the Masters’ Degrees in Disaster Management and Emergency Management with a research work.

It has been observed through various researches that in the last century, average temperatures across the globe increased by over 1.3°F with an increase of more than two times in the Arctic. (Bates, Kundzewicz, Wu, & Palutikof, June 2008). The results of climate change can also be seen in changing precipitation patterns, increases in ocean temperatures, changes in the sea level, and acidity and melting of glaciers and sea ice (USEPA, 2014).

According to scientific research, the average temperature of the earth has risen by between ten and twenty degrees Celsius (M.L. Weitzman, 2008). These high temperatures could well be described as a ‘recipe for disaster’, and could produce results that would be catastrophic on a global scale. What is more alarming however, is that there is already a lot of evidence of predicted results of climate change, for instance, in Australia especially, severe draughts have been common in farming areas in the last few decades, there has been an increase of intense and extreme weather events, for example floods, flash floods, tsunamis, earthquakes and tornados, almost all of the natural disasters listed have occurred for ‘unknown’ reasons in the past few years. Rises in sea water level and temperature due to higher acid levels caused by global warming, threaten the existence of species and in some areas, entire eco-systems resulting in the loss of natural biodiversity. ‘Climate change is pushing the world to the verge of environmental and economic collapse, whether global deniers want to believe it or not’ (N. Klein, 2011).

Climate change is difficult to communicate by its very nature. Greenhouse gases are invisible, and their accumulating effects (e.g., global warming, precipitation changes, and extreme weather events) can take years before they are felt. Worldwide warming trends are hard for the average person to detect amidst the variability of everyday weather and the causes are far removed, in both time and space, from the impacts. Climate change is thus an example of “hidden hazards”—risks that, despite potentially serious consequences for society, generally pass unnoticed or unheeded until they reach disaster proportions (Kasperson and Kasperson, 1991).

Attention Getting Device: On November 21, 2017 NASA published an article on the issue of global climate change which quoted this, ''NASA tool link port-city seal levels to regional ice melts''. NASA has been working to minimize the effect of global climate change and recently it has developed 'NASA tools'. This particular tool links changes in sea level of around 293 global port cities. Most specifically, the tool links changes seen in vulnerable regions, such as Greenland and the Antarctic Peninsula, where ice lands are melting rapidly. Such development will allow coastal planners to be aware and prepare for rising seas level for years to come.

“Natural disasters have killed more than 600,000 people and left behind trillions of dollars in damages in the last two decades, the United Nations said Monday.” (Chan) Extreme weather has caused millions of casualties and extreme damages over the years, but lately there has been an increase in severe weather events. This is causing problems in the US, with the amount of tornadoes rising in tornado alley “Tennessee experienced a 67 percent increase in tornado activity in 1983-2013 compared to the 1954-1983 time period. Oklahoma experienced a nearly 35 percent decrease in tornadoes in 1983-2013 compared to 1954-1983.”