▲ A person watches from his house as wildfire rages through forest surrounding the Mount Teide volcano natural park, on the Canary island of Tenerife, on August 21, 2023. Photo by Cesar Manso.

As we step towards December, it’s time to say goodbye to 2023. After we farewell to the lockdown of pandemic, extreme climate of these days is becoming increasingly eye-catching these days. Comparing with the pre-industrial level, this year’s average temperature is 1.32OC higher, which led to a series of El Niño phenomenon in this year. The originally supposed very low temperatures in November have now fluctuate erratically. When we extend our vision to the whole planet, things get even more chaotically: Iceberg in Greenland and Iceland is melting, and will increase the sea level by 70m if they all melts; Wildfire is raging in Hawaii, causing over 90 death; Signs of four seasons are no longer significant: even in November when the winter comes, the temperature still fluctuates at around 15 Celsius. The world seems to come to an inevitable ending.

Leo Lian, an A2 student who plans to major in Earth Science, expresses worries over this year’s catastrophes. “We are facing a threat with unimaginable size,”said Leo Lian, “since people’s activity returns back to the level before the pandemic, you can see how greatly human activities affects the climate from comparing figure in 2022 and 2023.” According to Leo’s observation, In 2023, the proportion of super typhoons among all typhoons has doubled compared to 2022, and increased fivefold compared to 1960, while the overall quantity remains the same as in 2022. 

One significant event of this year is the record-breaking wildfire in Canada that spreads over an area equal to twice of Portuguese’s domain. With this scale of fire, pouring water manually becomes no longer a viable solutions, instead, scientists developed an eco-gel as a fire extinguisher and is now used in this emergency event. The stickiness of this gel means that it can act as an insulated layer, excluding oxygen from fire. This gel is also eco-friendly since it will decompose naturally after fire has been contained without causing any harm to ecosystem.

▲ Melt water flows across the Greenland Ice sheet, the largest ice in Northern hemisphere. 

Source: Nature Portfolio

So what are people doing to deal with future extreme weather? In Guangdong, a coastal city where typhoon is significantly large and periodic, people build dams to use the great power of typhoon in generating electricity for their use during the rain season, while protect themselves from the disaster caused by the tsunami. Thanks to the machine learning model, weather forecast which might takes up to hours to generate can now be processed within minutes. This model can also be applied in disaster early-warning, which can detect flood, volcano eruption, earthquake etc., preventing the tragedy happen in Maui again and save millions of life and properties. With satellite equipped with infra-red sensor,  essential characteristics of wildfires such as fire intensity and rate of spread can be derived. It will also give us accurate data on carbon emission from wildfires. 

▲ The dam of the Xinfengjiang Resevoir, the largest reservoir in Guangdong Province, which has a storage capacity of 14 billion cube meter of water. 

Source: Souhu Net

When we look specifically at individuals, there are also things that we can do to save our planet. “Instead of immediately stop using plastic bag (which is impossible), we should focus on disputing rubbish correctly to eliminate ‘the white pollution’, and keep the emission of toxic greenhouse gas like C6H6, CH4 at a reasonable level.” , said Leo Lian. 

▲ 2023 August, British Columbia, a helicopter flies over the wildfire region.

Source: Washington Post

About the writer:

Thank you for reading my article! I’m George from A2-7. It’s a really unique experience to write an article about the topic that I had known little before. I sincerely hope you will find this brief introduction to this year’s climate change event helpful, and believe in that good things come to those who are patient in this increasingly complex world.