The Climate Crisis is here.

On August 29th, a category 4 storm made landfall in Louisiana. With hurricane Ida reaching over 105 mph winds, houses were ripped apart and streets flooded. As of September 8th, 300,000 Louisiana households remain without electricity. Hurricane Ida did not stop there, its rains and winds continued all the way up to New York, flooding streets, apartments, subways and killing over 43 people. Surrounding regions experienced over 10 inches of rain in just a couple of days, almost tripling the average September rainfall for most counties. Weeks before, New York was hit with two tropical storms, priming the streets for flooding. In just one hour, 3.15 inches of rain fell in Central Park. While hurricane Ida continued it’s 1,500 mile path of destruction, a third cyclone formed in the Atlantic, hurricane Larry. While Larry is not going to make land, wind, riptides and ocean waves are expected on shorelines during the week of Labor Day raising concern for the already damaged eastern seaboard. 

The stark increase in extreme weather events does not come as a surprise. A resource from the New York Times quotes President Biden, “the damage indicated that ‘extreme storms and the climate crisis are here,’ constituting what he called ‘one of the great challenges of our time’” (New York Times, 2021). The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report discusses that climate change is accelerating faster than we had anticipated. Breaching the 1.5 degrees celsius level by 2030 as opposed to 2040 is a high possibility for the future. Michel E. Mann, a lead author in the 2001 IPCC report, told CNN “Bottom line is that we have zero years left to avoid dangerous climate change, because it’s here”.

2020 and 2021 has been a wakeup call for watchful citizens across the globe. Catastrophic weather has affected millions of people, animals, organisms and bacteria. Increased drought, wildfires, flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, heatwaves and ice storms are all visible impacts of the climate crisis. To ensure our collective survival and protect the more vulnerable among us from the impacts of the climate crisis, we are called to carbon footprint, invest in clean energy and infrastructure, and support one another in community to build resiliency and maintain hope in a changing world. 

Interested in helping aid the victims of the Louisiana storm? Consider this article from the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/us/hurricane-ida-how-to-help.html

Citations:

Fritz, A., & Ramirez, R. (2021, August 9). Earth is warming faster than previously thought, scientists say, and the window is closing to avoid catastrophic outcomes. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/09/world/global-climate-change-report-un-ipcc/index.html.

Garrett, M. (2021, September 5). Hurricane Larry becomes a Category 3 Storm — this season’s third MAJOR cyclone in the Atlantic. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/03/weather/hurricane-larry-forecast-friday/index.html.

Hersher, M., & Chiwaya, N. (2021, September 2). Map: Here’s how much rain Ida dumped on the northeast. NBCNews.com. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/map-here-s-how-much-rain-ida-dumped-northeast-n1278428.

Paybarah, A. (2021, September 2). Flooding From Ida Kills Dozens of People in Four States. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/09/02/nyregion/nyc-storm.

Xu, Y., Ramanathan, V., & Victor, D. G. (2018, December 5). Global warming will happen faster than we think. Nature News. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07586-5.