Weather and Climate Case Studies

The Case studies we are going to use are:

• Cyclone Aila - Bangladesh
• Cyclone Nargis - Burma
• Hurricane Katrina - USA
• The Great Storm 1987
• Urban Air Quality - Los Angeles
• Urban Air Quality - Beijing
• An Inconvenient Truth

Cyclone Aila - Bangladesh
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW1rj9TXdGM

• 25th May 2009

Causes

• Low pressure weather systems
• Cloud depositing heavy rain over the land
• Updrafts of warm air causing atmospheric instability
• Condensation
• Tidal surges (air pressure decreases, sea height rises and strong winds)

Short Term Impacts

• 750,000 homes destroyed
• Animals and fish dies causing disease
• Water contamination
• Over 1 million without clean water
• 3.5 million of the poorest people affected
• Jobs such as farming lost

Long Term Impacts

• The rich left
• Land inundated with salt water so crops cannot be grown
• May 2010 people still in temporary shelter
• People have to travel over 2km to get clean water
• Trees dying giving a barron landscape and no wood for fuel

Responses

• Charities giving the country basics such as water, food and shelter
• Medical help
• Community Health workshops

Prediction and Planning

• Readings taken every 3 hours
• Satellite images taken every 30 minutes
• Videos used to train people
• Cyclone Shelters built by government and Non-governmental Organisations

Cyclone Nargis - Burma

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB_WuUGV1ko

· 27th April 2008, Burma

· Tropical depression in Bay of Bengal

· Category 3-4 storm

· Winds up to 215km/hour

· Yagon, Ayeyarwaddy, Bago, Mon & Kayin (5 regions) declared disaster zones

· 84,000 dead & thousands injured

· 54,000 missing

· 5 million homeless

· $10 million damage

· 2.5 million in urgent need of water, food & shelter

· Flooding

· 42% of Burma’s food stocks destroyed

· At first reluctant to accept help

· Foreign aid helped relief by pledging $50million

· 2008, June, UN appealed for over $300 million to help with relief

· Cyclone shelters build for future storms

Hurricane Katrina - USA
23rd August 2005

Causes

· Category 5

· Developed over the Bahamas, heading for Mississippi and Louisiana

· Wind speeds of 280 km/hour

· Central pressure of 902mb

· 5th most intense Atlantic basin hurricane on record

· 27th August President Bush declared state of emergency

· New Orleans ordered to be evacuated refugees left     behind ordered to seek protection in the Louisiana      Superdrome

· Powerful and strong winds

Impacts

· New Orleans ordered to be evacuated

· Storm surge 10 metres high in Louisiana

· Power and water supplies disrupted (233,000 km2 declared      disaster zone)

· Over 1 million people became refugees

· New Orleans had flood defences breached leading to 80% of the city flooded

· Looters ran riot through abandoned shops and homes in            Mississippi

· Damage estimated to be worth $200 billion

· Oil rigs and refineries were damaged = prices of oil shot up

· Tourism affected

· 110,000 homes flooded and 55,000  damaged beyond repair

· Businesses ruined and damaged

· Around 1,830 deaths

Responses

· Basic supplies or food and water delivered for 3 days

· Government aid put in place

· US Senate sent $10.5 billion aid in first week of           September

· Federal funds $51.8 billion allocated

· Other countries responded to the disaster

· Public donated $1.8 billion to America Red Cross

· 58,000 national guard personnel were activated to deal with the aftermath (troops came from all 50 states)

The Great Storm 1987

Causes

·        Happened on the night of October 1987

·        Hit the south coast of England (see map for worse affected places)

·        Warm air from the Africa met cold air from the Atlantic to cause a depression

·        Winds were over 100km/hour and on the coast of Hampshire, Sussex and Kent winds reached gale force 11

·        Rapid changes in temperature e.g. Farnborough 8.5^oc to 17.6^oc in 20 minutes

There were rapid changes in temperature as the warm front passed over e.gImpacts

·        19 people died in the UK

·        15 million trees knocked down à 6 famous trees in Sevenoaks

è Trees blocking railways and roads

·        Power lines down à 5 million homes without electricity

·        Caravan parks wrecked

·        Fire brigade had 6000 calls in 24 hours

·         Housing was damaged – insurance claims of £1.5 billion

·        Ferry blown ashore at Folkestone

·        Ship capsized at Dover

·        Fallen trees provided new habitats for animals

Responses

·        Clear-up took a long time à emergency crews coming in from the North

·        Losses from storm totalled £1.4 billion in UK alone

·        1 in 6 houses submitted insurance claims

·        Observation from Met office improved e.g.  observational coverage of the atmosphere over the ocean to the south and west of the UK was improved by increasing the quality and quantity of observations from ships, aircraft, buoys and satellites, while refinements were made to the computer models used in forecasting

·        Clean-up of fallen trees was criticised by ecologists for removing damaged broad lead trees that would have recovered

Urban Air Quality - Los Angeles
Causes

• LA contains 1,149km of freeway with over 25 million vehicles
• Over 1,130 tonnes of noxious gases emmitted from industrial chimmneys and cars etc everyday
• Exacerbated by the geography of LA; it sits in a basin where pollutants become trapped
• Pollutants may react with UV rays from the sun forming Photochemical Smog

Impacts

• 1996 - 5,873 deaths recorded due to particulates
• Costs to hospitals for respiratory diseases and cancer related to air pollution above $10billion
• Environmental Protection Agency estimates 35,000 cases of asthma could be prevented

Responses

• 1977 - Air Quality Management District (AQMD) formed to monitor pollution emissions
• AQMD monitord 28,000 businesses to ensure they don't exceed emission levels
• 1999 - AQMD made $25million avaliable in subsidies to businesses that switched to low emission fuels
• Govenor of California supported $50million proposal to purchase school buses that run on low emissions
• Proposals made to reduce incidence of smog by roofing houses with reflective roofing and planting more trees to reduce temperatures

Urban Air Quality - Beijing

Causes

• On-going construction
• Estimated 1,000 new cars on roads each day decreasing air quality

Impacts

• Prior to 2008 Olympics pollutions levels of PM10 were X3 the safe level
• Air pollution index was recorded 94 for opening day of Olympics (below 50 is considered healthy)
• 400,000 premature deaths each year

Responses

• Beijing has spent $16 billion on environmental programmes to try and reduce pollution
• Construction haltered on 26 sites during Olympics
• Banned up to 2 million vehicles for 2 months
• July 20th --> September 20th vehicles with odd and even number plates run on alternate days in the city
• Shutting 40 polluting factories during Olympics
• Relocation of factories up to 300km away

An Inconvenient Truth

http://www.climatecrisis.net/an_inconvenient_truth/about_the_film.php

• Please note that an inconvenient truth is very one sided and bias but it does have good evidence