By Dr. Hassan Humeida
KIEL, GERMANY: The term “natural disaster” has become misleading. It suggests a fateful, purely random event to which humanity is helplessly exposed. However, the reality of the 21st century looks different: Through man-made climate change, we have disrupted the Earth’s physical balance. Higher temperatures mean more energy in the atmosphere and oceans.
The result is a dramatic increase and intensification of natural disasters worldwide. Nature is not running amok without reason – we have overheated its engine.
The Oceans as a Breeding Ground: Monster Storms and Floods: The oceans act as the planet’s gigantic heat reservoirs. They absorb over 90 percent of the excess energy generated by the greenhouse effect. This warming has devastating consequences for the formation of tropical cyclones – called hurricanes, typhoons, or cyclones depending on the region.
Tropical storms draw their power directly from the warmth of the surface water. As sea temperatures reach record highs, meteorologists are increasingly observing the phenomenon of “rapid intensification”: within a few hours, harmless low-pressure areas develop into destructive mega-storms of the highest categories.
At the same time, warmer air can hold more moisture – roughly seven percent more per degree of warming. When these gigantic masses of water hit land, they discharge in torrential downpours. Entire regions, as seen recently in Pakistan or Central America, are submerged meters deep. Moreover, rising sea levels push the water even deeper and more destructively into coastal cities.
The Other Extreme: Mega-Droughts and the Wall of Fire: While some regions drown in water, others literally dry out. Higher temperatures accelerate the evaporation of moisture from soil and plants. When rainy seasons fail to materialize at all due to shifted air currents, so-called mega-droughts develop, dragging on for years.
This extreme dryness sets the stage for another type of disaster: uncontrollable wildfires and bushfires. Dried-out vegetation turns forests into gigantic tinderboxes. A single lightning strike or spark is enough to set off a wall of fire that moves at incredible speed.
The devastating fires in Australia, Canada, and the Mediterranean region in recent years have shown that these firestorms are now so intense that they generate their own micro-weather and can no longer be controlled by firefighters.
Invisible Disasters: Geological and Biological Cascades: However, climate change also triggers disasters that, at first glance, one might not connect with the weather. In the world’s high mountain ranges, the eternal ice is melting. The permafrost, which holds entire mountainsides together like a biological glue, is thawing. The result is a massive increase in unpredictable rockfalls and mudslides that bury entire mountain villages.
Additionally, the sudden melting of glaciers leads to the formation of unstable glacial lakes. When their natural dams break, gigantic tidal waves rush down the valleys, devastating everything in their path.
Conclusion: The End of Normality: The increase in natural disasters demonstrates that we have left our planet’s comfort zone. There is no going back to the old normal. Every tenth of a degree of additional warming further charges the atmospheric slingshot.
Dealing with these disasters globally requires a radical rethink: moving away from mere disaster relief after the event toward massive prevention and global climate protection. We must take the Earth’s warning signs seriously – because today’s natural disasters are only a foretaste of the uninhabitable world of tomorrow if we do not stop CO2 emissions.
