It has been estimated that extra pollution during the hot summer of 2006 in the UK, cost 460 lives. This leaves more pollution and ozone in the air, which leads to higher mortality in the population. Livestock and other animal populations may decline as well.ĭuring excessive heat, plants shut their leaf pores ( stomata), a protective mechanism to conserve water but also curtails plants' absorption capabilities. The evaporation of bodies of water can be devastating to marine populations, decreasing the size of the habitats available as well as the amount of nutrition present within the waters. Outbreaks of wildfires can increase in frequency as dry vegetation has increased likelihood of igniting. Dried soils are more susceptible to erosion, decreasing lands available for agriculture. Severely hot weather can damage populations and crops due to potential dehydration or hyperthermia, heat cramps, heat expansion, and heat stroke. īecause heat waves are not visible as other forms of severe weather are, like hurricanes, tornadoes, and thunderstorms, they are one of the less known forms of extreme weather. Excessive heat is often accompanied by high levels of humidity, but can also be catastrophically dry. Definitions of a heatwave vary because of the variation of temperatures in different geographic locations. Heat waves are periods of abnormally high temperatures and heat index. Some human activities can exacerbate the effects, for example poor urban planning, wetland destruction, and building homes along floodplains. For example, a global insurer Munich Re estimates that natural disasters cause more than $90 billion global direct losses in 2015. Current evidence and climate models show that an increasing global temperature will intensify extreme weather events around the globe, thereby amplifying human loss, damages and economic costs, and ecosystem destruction.Įxtreme weather has significant impacts on human society as well as natural ecosystems. Confidence in the attribution of extreme weather and other events to anthropogenic climate change is highest in changes in frequency or magnitude of extreme heat and cold events with some confidence in increases in heavy precipitation and increases in the intensity of droughts. The effects of extreme weather events are seen in rising economic costs, loss of human lives, droughts, floods, landslides and changes in ecosystems.Ĭlimate change is increasing the periodicity and intensity of some extreme weather events. The main types of extreme weather include heat waves, cold waves and tropical cyclones. Often, extreme events are based on a location's recorded weather history and defined as lying in the most unusual ten percent. This tornado struck Anadarko, Oklahoma during a tornado outbreak in 1999.Įxtreme weather or extreme climate events includes unexpected, unusual, severe, or unseasonal weather weather at the extremes of the historical distribution-the range that has been seen in the past. ![]() A tornado is an example for an extreme weather event.
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