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ENVIRONMENT
FEATURE | ENVIRONMENT
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Photo sources: NASA, toledoblade.com and flickr
In the 11th Month of the Year
Written by Mdpn. Anthony Ken J. Bucasas
CORONAVIRUS LOCKDOWN HELPED THE ENVIRONMENT TO BOUNCE BACK
As the transmission of novel corona virus (COVID-19) increases rapidly, the whole world adopted the curfew/ lockdown activity with restriction of human mobility. The imposition of quarantine stopped all the commercial activity that greatly affects the various important environmental parameters which directly connected to human health.
As all the types of social, economic, industrial and urbanization activity suddenly shut off, nature takes the advantages and showed improvement in the quality of air, cleaner rivers, less noise pollution, undisturbed and calm wildlife.
“Although coronavirus vaccine is not available coronavirus itself is earth’s vaccine and us humans are the virus”.
Source: Abstract of Shefali Arora, Kanchan Deoli Bhaukhandi, and Pankaj Kumar Mishrac In the 11th month of the year, a person can lose everything – his house, his car, or even his loved ones. Nature’s wrath is truly unforgivable, but the way humanity treated the environment was never different.
Past and the present.
Seven years ago, 6340 people died when a Category 5 typhoon named Haiyan or known as “Bagyong Yolanda” devastated the Philippines. Cold bodies were left in streets, the sound of wailing from people asking for help awaken the whole world, and it was a day when a lot of people prayed for being safe but a mourning for some. It was November — the 11th month of the year. Recently, Super Typhoon Rolly, another Category 5 typhoon that wiped out some parts of Catanduanes, and Typhoon Ulysses that made the whole province of Cagayan submerged in flood-water in the middle of a pandemic. It was November — the 11th month of the year.
The formation.
Whether it is named as typhoons in the western Pacific Ocean, hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean, or cyclones in the Indian Ocean, strong tropical cyclones are an example of nature’s violent rage. The criteria that conspire to form tropical cyclones are rather simple. Its origin can be traced with a small atmospheric disturbance located near or in a tropical ocean. If water temperatures are warm enough, generally
more than 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and atmospheric conditions are supportive with moisture and uniform winds, a tropical system can evolve. It first becomes a tropical depression in the Atlantic. The system graduates to a tropical storm as it gets stronger and then to end, when winds increase over 74 mph, it is termed a hurricane.
A climate crisis.
It’s reasonable to assume that as humanity continues to discharge planet-warming greenhouse gases, the likelihood of tropical cyclone activity rises. Generally speaking, the warmer the water temperatures, the more heat energy is available and the higher the potential for tropical cyclones to develop. A warmer climate will also bring some shifts in storm locations. For example, the authors of a 2014 paper discovered that tropical systems are increasingly reaching maximum intensity farther north or south from the equator as warmer waters expand towards the North and South Poles. This prospect puts areas of the U.S. northeast coast and maritime Canada in greater danger of a stronger hurricane in the Atlantic basin. According to a recent study led by Mingfang Ting of Columbia University, human-caused warming may lead to a weakening of disruptive vertical wind shear during active Atlantic hurricane cycles using 21stcentury climate model projections. Wind shear refers to hostile environmental winds that serves as a storm barrier which sometimes steers storms away from land, helping to weaken them. On a massively populated coast with a heavily built environment, this combination will be dangerous and destructive. The result will be more rapid intensification of storms as they near landfall if this weakening of wind shear is likely to happen. It’s clear from the research presented above that threats from tropical systems, and in particular from the most intense cyclones, are increasing. This trend will continue for the foreseeable future. While some of these anticipated impacts are already seared into our warmer climate, the most serious escalations can still be prevented. The only remedy is a rapid decarbonization of our economy and a society that is more ready for threats approaching our way.
Corona’s blessing.
Because of the coronavirus, the world changed — many cities around the world implemented quarantine and campaigns encouraging people to not go out without requirement. The decrease on the movement in big cities caused focused effects in the environment, like the reduction on the release of pollutants in the atmosphere. The European Environmental Agency (EEA) discovered that in Madrid, the medium levels of nitrogen dioxide withdrew 56% in the weekly comparison after the Spanish government banned unnecessary trips after March 14th. It was not different in parts of Europe. Cities like Brussels, Paris, Madrid, Milan and Frankfurt had a reduction on the medium levels of nitrogen dioxide between March 5th and 25th in comparison with the same period last year. With the factories and trade closing, the traveling restrictions to deal with the virus spreading resulted on a reduction of pollutant emissions in the atmosphere.
Remedy.
There were many untold stories of how people in the Philippines suffered every time the 11th month of the year passes by. Some stories were about the dead relatives we remember but some were about the tragedies suffered by Filipinos during the strong typhoons that passed by in the country. In the 11th month of the year, a Filipino can lose everything – his house, his car, or even his loved ones. Nature’s wrath is truly unforgivable, that is why humanity must treat the environment like how he wanted to be treated in return.
