Читать книгу Carbon Counter - Mark Lynas - Страница 9

 Sea levels are rising at about 3mm per year, faster than during the whole of the last one hundred years. People in Pacific island nations like Tuvalu are already planning to leave their homelands, while cities like New York and London are threatened by rising tides.

 Mountain glaciers are retreating worldwide, from the Alps to the Andes. The Alps have lost half their glacier cover since 1850. In the Andes, the melting glaciers mean that essential freshwater supplies will soon be lost for ever.

 Snow cover in northern areas is decreasing, and permafrost in the Arctic is melting, causing damage to buildings and roads in Alaska and Siberia.

 The melting icecap on the Arctic Ocean is affecting animals that depend on it. Polar bears have been left without ice to rest on, and some have drowned while trying to swim long distances. Walruses have tried to climb into white fishing boats, mistaking them for the ice floes that have disappeared.

 Both Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice mass; Greenland now loses 250 cubic kilometres of water each year, adding to sea level rise.

 Major floating ice shelves have collapsed in Antarctica. The latest was Larsen B, which fell apart spectacularly in a few days in 2002, much to the shock of watching scientists.

 Droughts have increased around the world, as has the incidence of heavy rainfall, due to the speeding up of the water cycle with more energy in the atmosphere. In Mumbai, during the 2005 monsoon, nearly a metre of rain fell in a single 24-hour period (the highest total ever), killing 750 people with the resulting floods.

 Hurricanes and typhoons are getting stronger, with heavier rainfall and more destructive winds. Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans,

Tip: Hurricanes get their energy from the heat of the oceans, which evaporate their water into the swirling clouds that make up these terrifying storms. So as the oceans get hotter because of global warming, hurricanes have more ‘rocket fuel’ to boost their power.

was one of the strongest Atlantic storms ever observed. Half a million people have still not returned to the ruined city, and are considered ‘climate refugees’ by some scientists.

 Heatwaves have also increased in frequency and intensity. In 2003, severe heat killed up to 30,000 people across Europe. In Paris, morgues were over-flowing with the corpses of elderly people, and some had to be stored in vegetable cooling warehouses.