Nowadays the Earth is facing numerous problems. They are social, political, economic and environmental. There are problems the mankind can deal with; there are some which are out of our control. The problems with the environment are of such type. The environment pollution and the climate changes are responsible for the abnormal things which are happening on the planet, namely violent storms in the regions which have never witnessed ones, floods of the lands which have always been droughty, snowfalls in the deserts. The wild weather is explained in many ways. Global warming is considered to be one of the reasons. So the question we need to answer is whether it really causes the incidents of unusual violent weather patterns.

 

The answer is affirmative, but not to the full extent. Our planet witnessed a year of unusual weather conditions. In New York, what turned out to be a tornado shocked the city-dwellers. Previous winters there were recorded extreme cold temperatures and violent snow storms in all the countries above the equator. At the same time, the southern countries suffered from the extremely hot and dry weather. In Australia and South America there were torrential rains which resulted into massive floods; in some states of the United States, the unusual frost damaged the crops of tropical fruits. The examples are numerous. These examples are used to demonstrate the devastating effect of the increase in the temperatures.

It should be noted that climate change does not mean just hotter summers and freezing colder winters in the regions where these weather patterns are not typical. The scientists state that with the increase in the temperature of the Earth there will happen a lot more weather abnormalities than just warming up which is sure to continue. Not only the temperatures of ocean waters will change, but the levels of the seas and oceans will increase. These factors are bound to have a great influence on the environment, the consequences ranging from the changes in rain patterns to the changes in the direction of the winds. Some of the above phenomena are already happening; some of them are yet to come in the nearest future.

One should bear in mind that although the planet has witnessed abnormal incidents of the weather change in the recent decade, it is significant to distinguish between occasional individual cases of extremely unusual weather and the wider phenomenon of the changes in climate conditions. The climatologists maintain that it is not possible to credit the phenomenon under discussion with a single storm, even a huge one; rather, they observe the weather patterns in the course of time to make an evaluation of which aspects are caused by the manmade problems. For instance, several heavy snowfalls recorded lately were caused by two massive weather fronts which had collided. The Columbia University researchers speculate that it was nothing but a natural deviation, rather than an indicator of the changes in climate conditions. There are a lot of other incidents to cite which are not considered to be attributed to warming.

Following the same pattern, the seasons that are characterized by particularly hot or cold weather are the result of eccentric patterns in the atmosphere. But what is crucial in terms of environment pollution is that the above-described incidents must become a trend, that is continue happening for more than ten years or even more, to be considered as such which are important in terms of climate change. The seasonal changes like this can be transformed from unusual weather events into the shifts on the climate level. Occasional floods and droughts taken by themselves cannot be solely attributed to the atmosphere becoming hotter, with the heating up of the Earth’s climate it becomes possible for such phenomena to become heavier and more dangerous in a case when they do occur. But as the climate heats up, it’s more likely that precipitation will be heavy and possibly dangerous when the phenomenon occurs.

There have been carried out numerous researches which have begun to demonstrate that in certain cases it is really global warming which is credited for unusually transformed and extreme weather patterns. The analysis made by the Duke University researchers shows that the summer weather patterns have been constantly changing in the southeastern part of the United States. Half of the analyzed summers were either extremely wet or extremely hot in the above region. The level of precipitation exceeded the one typical of the previous summers. Having thoroughly investigated naturally occurring phenomena for this, the scientists at Duke state that they have not but found any reasonable explanations.

The rise in temperatures has an impact on various spheres of human activity ranging from agriculture to health care. Not only abnormal weather patterns may be attributed to it. There is a theory which states that accelerated speeds of the winds are likely to be linked to the phenomenon of climate change which is a direct consequence of warming. Another theory has made a suggestion that hotter weather - that is a combination of longer summer periods and a lower level of snow precipitation in winter – is a valid ground for extending growing agricultural seasons in certain areas of the world. What also concerns the scientists is the spread or intensification of malaria conditioned by rising temperatures, as long as the disease is contagious and passed along much more easily in the conditions of the extreme warmth. There are even more dramatic claims about global warming being able to cause or reinforce civil wars in certain regions of the world. The conflicts in different parts of the world, especially in Africa, are often caused by limited agricultural resources, and they have been more likely to happen the years of unusual warmth when the above resources become even more limited.

To conclude, it does not matter whether the above things might happen or not, the mankind is to accept the truth – global warming is here to occur and we should be ready to face the unexpected.