Climate Change and Global Warming

The times have been changing and if we look at the world around us, we may see some things that shouldn't be like that. If we look at how weather patterns have drastically changed and natural disasters becoming more severe, we can see that there's something wrong with the planet. That's what we want to cover today, we want to understand climate change and global warming, how are they different, and their impacts on our planet.

Climate Change

First, it's important to preface that climate change is not a synonym for global warming. Climate change is a phenomenon that scientists have been looking into even 200-years ago. They were looking into how our activities impact the climate of the Earth. It took them about a hundred years before even arriving at evidence that suggests a link between the two.

Climate change, as the name would show, is the drastic global or regional changes to climate patterns. Now, it's important that you don't confuse weather with climate. Climate is the collective weather conditions that an area experiences in a long period of time whereas weather is just how the day or maybe the week will be (like situations where we say today is sunny, rainy, or cloudy). Climate is more concerned with the prevailing weather conditions over the course of the next three months or maybe the whole year.

Climate change includes global warming but also concerns itself with the drastic weather changes other Earth being too warm. We can look at what happened in Texas earlier this year, where the state had severe winter storms or Egypt receiving snow due to the cold snap in 2013. 

Generally, climate change is blamed to be caused by the significant rise of greenhouse gases since the industrial revolution and the modern age. These are gases we release every day from smoking to car emissions and large industrial factories releasing the smoke as a byproduct of making their products.

Global Warming

Global warming on the other hand, as the name would show, is the overall drastic and continuous warming of the Earth. This is one of the impacts of Climate Change. See, when we say global warming isn't a synonym of climate change, it's because global warming is one of the effects of climate change.

As the planet heats up, we can see a rapid rise in sea levels and this isn't just because there's a hurricane, but in a more permanent sense of the change regardless of the amount of rain. This in turn can cause a huge threat of storm surge and flooding in coastal areas because seawater can easily get through the land.

Global warming is also a catalyst for more severe storms and rainfall, especially for the United States. As we get over the winter season and its colder temperatures, the sudden surge of significantly warm air brings devastating rainfall, storms, and worse hurricanes when cold winter air clashes with the upcoming warm spring season. 

Global warming's unnatural levels of heat also melt — at an abnormally fast rate — the ice and snow from Winter which presents the constant threat of flash flooding in areas close to these once-frozen bodies of water.  This is what we commonly refer to as spring runoff.

Both climate change and its effect on global warming are the biggest threat when it comes to the natural response of Earth to natural disasters. Due to severe wildfires taking down trees that protect us from flooding, landslides, and mudslides, but this didn't come naturally.

What Caused It?

It's often mentioned that the climate change we're experiencing is the result of our actions as humans. Yes, there's a natural way that climate change can happen, but the impacts of these are smaller and short-term compared to the long-term and huge impacts that manmade climate change is bringing.

Numerous factors contribute to greenhouse gases known as the greenhouse effect. One of the biggest causes is because we're burning a lot of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas to power everything we need like cars or other transportation, and daily energy uses like electricity and heat. These fossil fuels we're burning actually contributed about 80% of the total greenhouse gas emissions. All the abandoned oil and gas wells that are now leaking produce more methane than initially estimated that which contributes to 20% of annual methane emissions. 

We can also look at deforestation and wildfires taking down trees that naturally help us fight these gases. Brazil, last year, reached an increase of almost 10% on deforestation. This became the highest level since 2008 and caused even more severe forest fires that further take down trees in the area.

Climate change is the biggest hurdle we're facing when it comes to preserving the state of Earth. We always talk about preserving the value of your property long-term by protecting it from flood damage, but it can only go so far. When faced with bigger, more volatile, and violent floodings, even the best flood mitigation efforts might not be able to handle it.

We should also do our part in helping fight this climate crisis, so we also avoid severe natural disasters which only become worse each year. If you have any questions on global warming, climate change, how this can impact flood insurance, how this can worsen flood events across the country, or anything about flood, reach out to us.

Remember, we have an educational background in flood mitigation and we want to help protect you and your property against flood loss long term. Click the links below to know more, get a quote to protect yourself from flooding, and visit our YouTube channel for our daily flood education videos.