Climate Changes in the Southern Hemisphere
In the southern hemisphere the climate is milder with less strong winds but during the summer heavy storms can be a hazard to shipping and coastal areas. During the monsoon season cyclones can spring up without warning and threaten the coastal regions of the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. Being the warmest ocean in the world the Indian Ocean seems also to be the most volatile in terms of weather pattern and climate.
Rain Forests and Tropical Forests
Forests have a huge impact on our climate and the deforestation in some parts of the world has already had an impact on changes in weather patterns.
The high humidity in rainforests, where giant trees soak up carbon dioxide from the air and store it, rises up to form rain clouds which periodically empty themselves back into the forests. Hundreds of thousands of plants and animal life exist in these forests and the trees are often referred to as our planet’s lungs.
In tropical forests the climate is less water logged but nevertheless humidity remains quite high and the temperatures are generally high. Less dense in growth tropical forests are a haven for animals, plants and insects. Both rainforests and tropical forests contribute to lessoning the impact of greenhouse gases and global warming.
Northern Climate
Across parts of Scotland and Scandinavia as well as Northern Germany the climate is damp and cold, with severe winters and short summers. Coastal regions are less severe but prone to strong winds and unstable weather patterns.
Mediterranean Climate
Famous for its warm, temperate climate the Mediterranean experiences far less rain fall than its northern counterpart. Some parts have very little rainfall and are as a result dry and hot but other parts are lush and green in vegetation with long summers and milder winters.
Extremes of Climate Change
One hundred million years ago the Antarctic was covered in rainforests and small dinosaurs roamed the shores, nibbling their way through vegetation. Today a 3 kilometre strong layer of ice buries their trace. Throughout our planet’s history there have been dramatic changes in climate, from the lush green forests of the Antarctic to the frozen icecaps of today’s poles.
Over the past half century, the Antarctic has undergone a warming up process at the rate of 2.8 degrees Celsius, a far greater increase than anywhere else in the world. Could rainforest thrive there once again in the future?
A cooling down of the Gulf Stream on the other hand would see harsher climate gripping Northern Europe, with Britain in particular losing out on the climate front. Harsher, much colder winters would follow shorter wetter summers. Greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for our predicament although many people still argue whether this is really our fault or whether this is just part of a climate change cycle which our planet undergoes over thousands of years.
The data locked away in the ice at our poles has already yielded some astonishing insight into our past climate. Growth rates of tiny sea creatures and dendrology tell us about the increase and decrease of growing during either longer or shorter feeding seasons. Explorer Scott and his crew could not have foreseen how important their collection of marine creatures and plant life would one day be to science, when they collated and recorded their finds in the early 1900s.
What the future holds for our established ideas of climate is hard to say. Yet one thing is for certain, and that is the climate is changing rapidly. Not necessarily for the better.