4
And as the temperature warms , ocean evaporation increases , much like if you were to boil water ; the higher you turn up the heat , the more evaporates . And more evaporation contributes to the increase of rain and snowfall .
You may be wondering how this is linked to drought if we are supposedly getting more rain ; well , the thing is , the atmosphere is heating up too . And the warmer it gets , the more moisture it is able to hold , and the more it can hold , the higher the intensity of rainfall and risk of floods is . But this increase in rain does not equal wetter soil . When rain falls as a violent downpour , it doesn ’ t soak into the ground like it would if it was drizzling or simply raining normally . This means that the heavy rain doesn ’ t soak in , so it causes flooding as it stays on top of the ground , but then quickly runs away off through rivers and back into the ocean . And this is where it links to droughts . Not only is the soil not getting as wet as it could have , but evaporation isn ’ t increasing as quickly as the heat of the atmosphere and henceforth , its water holding capacity . This means that the water takes longer to recharge after a downpour so there can be little to no rain in between . And so henceforth , droughts along with flooding have increased .
Hurricanes : Hurricanes require three main things in order to fuel themselves . One , high humidity . Two , almost constant winds at different altitudes and three , ocean surface temperatures at 26 ° C or over ( this is because rising , warmer and moister air helps to power the storms ). And with global warming heating up the oceans this is going to mean more hurricanes along with the warmer air which will mean more warm water vapour than cold with the atmospheric water pressure having risen as well .
And with the ocean temperatures rising there is going to be less cold subsurface water of which to halt the hurricane in its tracks as the wind from the hurricane churns it up and the cooler temperatures weaken it . This means that the number of hurricanes is going to increase and has increased , with the rising wind speeds being caused by warming waters in the tropical Atlantic which could cause maximum wind speeds to increase as much as 13 %. Which is enough to boost a hurricane up to the next category . So not only will we be receiving more hurricanes due to global warming , but their intensity will be increasing also .
Heatwaves : Finally there are heatwaves . As I explained earlier about greenhouse gases causing the Earth to heat up ( see paragraph 5 ) these rising temperatures are going to cause , obviously , more hot weather . And more hot weather equals more heatwaves . In fact , if our adding of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere is not stopped , scientists expect the ratio of record highs to record lows to reach 20:1 , in contrast to the ratio in the 1950s being 1:1 . And then this will