Hurricane Harvey’s disastrous effects to the coastal cities of Corpus Christi and Houston in the state of Texas , USA a few days ago brought back many memories of our frequent calls to these ports, though they were more than two decades ago.
Over our morning cup of tea it occurred to us that the weather in the Gulf of Mexico had surely changed for the worse since then . Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012 hit the East Coast of USA causing a lot of destruction . These are two of these storms which will be remembered for long by sailors. Tornado’s are also being reported with increasing frequency in this region.
The Earth’s average rate of rise of surface temperature due to the effects of global warming is steadily increasing every year and is now almost touching 1 degree Celsius as indicated in the graph below.
So how does all this affect us – the seafarers; some could be considered positive though . As the sea temperatures rise, they give more energy to these storms increasing their frequency and the associated wind force . In the Arctic Ocean the ice has already melted enough to allow ships to navigate from Japan to Europe using the new “Northern Sea Route” saving almost half a month of sailing time as compared to the usual route through the Suez.
Low lying nations such as Maldives, Seychelles , Kiribati, Solomon Islands and even the coastal region of Bangladesh are threatened to disappear under water due to the rise in sea levels which is taking place as the ice keeps melting in the Arctic, Antarctic and other regions .
Over land, the severity of forest fires in Australia , US and Europe has been increasing over the last decade, though this does not directly affect us.
The world has woken up to these facts and almost all nations are taking steps to slow down the rate of “global warming” by increasing the production of electricity by solar and wind energy harvesting methods thereby reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
India ratified the Paris climate agreement on Mahatma Gandhi Ji’s birthday, 2016 and has promised the world that it has set Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) targets to lower the emissions intensity by 2030 to below 2005 levels, to increase the share of non-fossil based power generation capacity to 40% of installed electric power capacity by 2030 and to substantially increase the forest and tree cover by 2030.
However the recent pulling out by the US from the Paris climate agreement has slowed down the momentum considerably though it is the second biggest emitter of CO2 after China.