Wrath of the Earth

Why natural disasters are increasingly shaking the planet

The weather news nowadays is not so different from the coverage of military conflicts. The news about major wildfires, floods, hurricanes, and landslides comes from different parts of the world almost every day. Some people argue that the flow of such messages is just a consequence of the total informatisation of society — allegedly, destructive cataclysms also happened before but the media paid less attention to them. However, even if you look at the impartial statistics, it becomes clear that the increased number of natural disasters is far from being an idle horror story. So what is behind climate change?

A number of villages and towns in Afghanistan have been hit by devastating earthquakes. About 2,500 people fell quake
victims, at least 10,000 were injured in October 2023.


On the one hand, the number of disaster-related deaths is effectively decreasing, yet their number is still high. First, warning systems are still not advanced enough in regions such as Latin America and the Caribbean, which face the highest hazard associated with tropical storms. Secondly, population growth, especially in poor countries, forces people to settle in locations their ancestors avoided due to the high probability of a natural disaster: flood, mudslide, avalanche, or rockfall.
A massive landslide that occurred in Papua New Guinea in May 2024 has become a telling example in this regard. The tragedy claimed more than 2,000 lives, and the vast majority of bodies are forever buried under tonnes of rock and mud smashed into their homes. At the same time, the causes of the landslide, in addition to the earthquake, include the development of a gold mine in the disaster area, while the excessively long wait for help to the victims was explained by the poor condition of roads and tribal clashes.  

A vicious circle

Most experts attribute the increase in the number of natural disasters to climate change on the planet. The mechanism of global warming is based on the greenhouse effect. 
Let us enter a reservation that this is a natural phenomenon and if it were not for the greenhouse effect, the average air temperature on the planet would be around minus 18 degrees Celsius and not plus 15, as it is the case now.
How does the greenhouse effect work? The Earth’s surface is heated by solar radiation — short-wave radiation coming from the main star of the Solar System. Greenhouse gases pass it through, letting the planet heat up and give off thermal radiation in the form of long-wave radiation that is subsequently trapped by greenhouse gases and prevented from leaving the atmosphere. As a result, the temperature on the planet is rising, and the more greenhouse gases are available in the atmosphere, the more intense this process is. 
Oceans are the main recipient of energy on our planet. The water at the surface becomes warmer, and the air above the water also warms up more. The warmer the air, the more moisture it can absorb. The higher the temperature of the liquid water, the more intense the rate of evaporation, and, accordingly, the more heat the Earth receives, the more moisture the atmosphere has. 
One of the most illustrative examples of how the described mechanism affects the weather is the devastating hurricanes that torment the Atlantic and Pacific coasts every year.

Kid playing with the climate

One of the major driving forces of the Earth’s climate systems, although not the only one, is El Niño — a natural phenomenon that occurs roughly every two to seven years in the centre and the east of the tropical Pacific Ocean. It is expressed in a noticeable rise in sea surface temperatures, triggering an increase in tropical cyclone activity.
The peak values of the El Niño event have already caused a lot of trouble. Thus, the drought has been exacerbated in the northern regions of South America, while East Africa on the contrary has been covered by torrential rains that resulted in terrible floods in Kenya and Tanzania. According to rough estimates alone, the rampant disaster has already claimed the lives of more than 400 people, and 637,000 people have become refugees due to rising water levels.

Horrific floods in Kenya and Tanzania have killed more than 400 people and made 637,000 people refugees

Is it natural or dirty?

Whether we will be able to understand the extent of human influence on the climate system may determine the choice of the further path of civilisation development.
Proponents of the natural character of the current global warming point out that at present, the planet is in the period of natural temperature rise. The fact is that throughout its history, Earth has experienced periods of alternate cooling and warming.
The last two shifts in climate trends are of interest to us. Thus, the period from about 950 to 1250 is commonly called the Medieval Climate Optimum — the era of a relatively warm climate in the Northern Hemisphere, which was characterised by mild winters, warm and, most importantly, stable weather.
The Medieval Climate Optimum was replaced by the Little Ice Age — a period of wide-spread cooling — with its severe frosty and snowy winters, often unstable rainy weather and sudden temperature changes. The scientific community traditionally considers the middle of the 19th century to be the end of that period, after which the current warming period began.  

When there was no summer

Let us not forget about climate-related ‘black swans’, which can shock the world no less than their economic relatives. This refers to local events that have a global impact on the climate. Readers interested in the topic will surely recall the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 and the ‘year without a summer’ that followed. It brought severe cold and famine to the United States and Western Europe, having left colourful sunset landscape and the legendary Frankenstein by Mary Shelley instead.  
Judging by the reports of Australian scientists from the University of South Wales, we have got a Tambora of our own — the underwater Hunga Tonga – Hunga Ha’apai volcano that exploded in January 2022 in the Pacific Ocean. It will have a significant impact on the climate of winter months throughout the Earth and will cause the current summer to be more humid.
Humanity today does not possess effective ways to globally affect the climate and is unlikely to acquire such technologies in the near future. However, studying the ongoing processes provides a chance to improve the systems of forecasting, preventing and countering cataclysms.

The lack of knowledge about the planetary climate does not allow us to accurately predict future weather patterns. It can only be stated with a certain degree of confidence that the era of climate instability will last long enough and humanity needs to learn to live in these conditions.

By Anton Popov