News Article (environment)

News Commentary // The Environment

Cezary Marcinkiewicz//section 011

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World’s Cities Experiencing More Heat Waves, Study Shows

Section I

This article is about urban areas of the world and heatwaves. The article, entitled

“World’s cities experiencing more heatwaves, study shows”, begins by citing a study of extreme

temperatures in hundreds of urban areas over the past 40 years. The study concluded that cities

around the globe are not only experiencing more heatwaves, but fewer cold spells. In addition,

the study found that the number of windy days in numerous cities is declining, but the number of

extremely hot days and nights is increasing. The research conducted also yielded a surprising

result, that changes in precipitation in urban areas over the last 40 years was very minimal. This

was not expected because some of the previous work done showed that changes in precipitation

were higher in major US urban areas. The article concludes by saying that although urban areas

only account for a small portion of the world, they are the center of wealth, commerce, and

industry, so environmental damages could likely result in the economy suffering. Overall, the

article focuses on the large number of heat waves occurring in urban cities across the world.

Who: Climate researchers from US and Indian universities

What: Heat waves in urban areas

When: Over the past 40 years

Where: Urban areas across the world

Why: The article did not mention why this environmental is occurring. It simply stated

that it is occurring throughout the world.

This article was written by John Vidal and it was published online on January 29th, 2015 from

theguardian.com

Section II

One of the impacts of heat waves, the environmental issue discussed in Section 1, on

society has to do with people’s health and well being. Heat waves can cause heat stroke,

dehydration, and heat exhaustion. Extreme heat can kill people, especially the elderly and young

children. In fact, those at the greatest risk of death in heat waves are the elderly that live in urban

areas without access to air conditioning for a portion of the day.

People need to be aware of the heat waves occurring in urban areas across the world

because these cities are very populated, so any negative consequences that occur as a result could

potentially affect a great deal of people. In populated cities, it is very common for people to walk

places and in the heat, this could pose numerous threats on the human body. People must be very

conscious of the environmental and temperature changes occurring, so they can plan out their

day, for example: how they dress and how they get places (walking or another means of

transportation), accordingly.

An outcome of heatwaves is that it could cause many deaths. Urban areas are home to a

great deal of people, from children to the elderly, that would be exposed to extreme heat and, as I

mentioned above, high temperatures have very negative consequences on human health. In

addition, if living conditions in urban areas become unbearable, many people could move out of

these areas, causing rural areas to become very congested. Many jobs are located in large cities

and if people move out of cities and acquire different jobs, this could cause the economy to take

a hit. This could also create competition between a great deal of people for a limited number of

jobs and positions.

There are some ways to help reduce the climate change occurring. In cities, there are

many people that drive cars despite the fact that it is very common for public transportation to be

available. When people drive cars, it emits Carbon Dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and I know from a

previous science class that greenhouse gases contribute to climate change. If people took public

transportation, it could reduce these emissions. If this is just not an option for some people, it

would be better for the environment if people could carpool, thus reducing the number of cars

polluting the environment.

I recommend others to read this article because it does not just talk about climate change

in general, it talks about this serious issue in urban settings. I have not encountered other articles

that do this and it made me more aware of the situation in cities, so I think that this would be a

good and informative article for others to read.

Summary of scoring: 1. Clarity of presentation 2/2 2. Answering required questions 2/2 3. Grammar 2/2 4. Formatting 2/2 5. Topic selection 2/2

Total scoring 10/10

The article:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/30/worlds-cities-experiencing-more-

heatwaves-study-shows

World's cities experiencing

more heatwaves, study shows Number of extremely hot days a year has increased in hundreds

of cities since the 1970s years, with frequencies peaking in the

last five years

More extreme heat, less cold spells and less high winds is the weather trend for many of the

world’s cities, a new study shows. Photograph: Richard Baker/Corbis

John Vidal Thursday 29 January 2015 19.01 EST

World cities are experiencing more heatwaves and fewer cold spells,

according to a study of extreme temperatures in hundreds of urban areas

over the past 40 years. It found that many cities are seeing fewer

extremely windy days than in the 1970s and have more extremely hot

individual days and nights.

The climate researchers from US and Indian universities identified 620

of the world’s urban areas with a population over 250,000 and then

chose 217 which were situated close to an international weather station

with rainfall, wind and temperature records stretching back to 1973.

They found that four of the five years with the most heatwaves had

occurred since 2009. They were experienced mostly in Africa, East Asia,

Europe and North America.

“The number of extremely hot days increased significantly at most sites

[over the 40 years]. However, a few urban areas in East Asia showed

significant declining trends. Only 2% of the urban areas experienced

significant declines in the frequency of extreme hot days,” said the authors.

“Extremely windy days declined substantially during the last 40 years

with significant declines in about 60% in the urban areas,” said the authors, who defined heatwaves as periods of at least six days where the

daily maximum temperature was hotter than 99% of days since 1973.

The results, published in Environmental Research Letters, also showed a

significant decline in six-day or longer cold spells. Around 17% of urban

areas were found to have experienced a significant increase in daily

rainfall and 10% experienced a significant increase in annual maximum

precipitation.

“Our results show significant increases in heat waves and the number of

hot days and warm nights, and at the same time declines in cold waves

and extreme windy days in many urban areas over the last 40 years. We

also find that the number of changes in precipitation extremes was

modest, which is somewhat surprising as our previous work showed a

predominance of increases in precipitation extremes in major US urban

areas,” said lead research author Vimal Mishra from the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar.

“Urban areas make up a relatively small part of the global land area; but

they are the centre of wealth, so damage to urban infrastructure could

result in potentially large economic losses,” he said.