Water, wind and fire: it is a real climate disaster that is engulfing America in these hours. Canada has been actually burning for days, swept away by an unprecedented heat wave with temperatures well above 40 degrees, 10-15 degrees higher than normal. As in Vancouver, the famous port in British Columbia, where it touched 49.6 degrees Celsius, the highest temperature ever reached in Canada: it caused the deaths of at least 500 people and as many as 240 fires. Meanwhile, in the US northwest, infernal temperatures are melting the streets asphalt: Residents of big cities like Boston and New York have been told to limit the use of appliances and air conditioners as much as possible to avoid them. risk of power failure.
Closed shops and hotels, away from gangs. New York has turned off a thousand lights
By our reporter FEDERICO RAMPINI
Waiting for Hurricane Elsa
If the north is burning, in the south of the country there is a hurricane warning. Here in these hours, Elsa is the scariest: the first Tornado The season is actually heading toward Florida. And do not care if, having devastated the Little Antilles with its load of winds and torrential rains, it in the meantime lost power almost unharmed to the island of Cuba: transformed into a (malicious) tropical storm, and left behind. “Only” 3 dead and 100,000 evacuated, in addition to landslides and floods. But now that it’s targeting the southern United States, and ready to hit the Florida peninsula – where Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has already declared a state of emergency – meteorologists fear a new boost “fueled” by the warm waters of the East End. from the Gulf of Mexico. It is also for this reason that in Miami they hastened to complete the demolition of the remains of the buildings that collapsed last June 24: a decision was made on the controlled bombing of the last unsafe buildings, despite the opposition of relatives of the victims, given that only 28 bodies were recovered from 121 of the missing.
United States, Gov. Newsom: “Come to California and take a closer look at the fires. It’s all climate change wrong.”
Experts, on the other hand, have no doubts. It’s going to be a higher-than-normal hurricane season, even without necessarily hitting the crazy budget for 2020: yes, in short, the historical record of last summer, when in the midst of the Covid emergency hurricane was 30 (more than 28 in 2005) and seven hurricanes struck the southern United States. Of course, scientists explain that climate change does not directly affect the number of recorded phenomena. But it contributes to making them more ferocious and destructive due to the increase in sea surface temperature. A thesis outlined in the Clausius and Clapyron equation, which according to each additional half-degree of heat, there is an increase of about 3 percent of the average atmospheric moisture content which then serves as fuel, in fact, for passing hurricanes.
Hawaii Paradox
Water, fire…and then there’s the Hawaiian paradox. The archipelago, which until recently was one of the wettest places in America thanks to its tropical forests, has become a fire-risk area just like the one in California where the fires are raging again. Yes, this summer even the lands of the islands – says The New York Times Two-thirds of them are affected by severe drought. But incredibly, the fault lies in the torrential rains of recent years: they have allowed the unlimited growth of invasive plants, which have dried up in the intense heat, become highly flammable and fuel dozens of fires.
USA, Hurricane Sally: More than 500,000 Americans are without electricity. “Four months of rain fell in four hours”
For activists this summer is a turning point: the impact of climate change is so obvious (even in the rest of the world: look at the catastrophic fire on the island of Cyprus) that it can no longer be ignored. But in the meantime, they’re accusing not even the president Joe Biden That has also put climate change at the center of its agenda is doing enough. There is no more time. The end of the world is already here.
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