Extreme Storms Occur the World Over

There has been a plethora of extreme natural disasters lately, and many believe these storms are a result of global warming. One of the hottest current topics in news, global warming has been receiving increasing amounts of attention.

More and more people are dying from storm systems. It seems to have begun with Hurricane Katrina, but many forget of the typhoons on the other side of the pacific. Of the Indian Ocean tsunami, one of the biggest in history, which killed about 300,000 people in 2004. Largely escaping media attention is the rising number of wildfires in Australia, the latest of which required help from fire fighters outside the country.

Last month, Florida experienced one of the strongest tornadoes in its history during the spring season. It is still unknown just how many tornadoes occurred, but upwards of twenty people were killed by the winds.

Just this past week, more tornadoes were seen in yet another system, which traveled east across the central part of the country. One, which struck a high school in Enterprise, Alabama, killed eight students. President Bush visited Enterprise earlier today, declaring a national state of emergency in the area, opening the way for federal funding.

The President also traveled to Georgia, where another nine were declared dead. Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue declared states of emergencies in nine counties.

This same system has resulted in severe winter weather across the Midwestern states. There, it has accounted for fifteen more deaths. At Chicago's O'Hare Airport, five hundred flights were cancelled due to the inclement weather.

And those are just the storms being experienced in this country. More are occurring overseas.

In March of 2004, the South Atlantic experienced its first ever hurricane, Cyclone Catarina. Prior to this event, scientists believed this to be impossible. Catarina developed just outside the coast of Brazil.

For the past three days, areas in Indonesia, including Jakarta and others, have been experiencing torrential downpours. Forty people have died due to the landslides which occurred as a result.

While it has been reported that some scientists dispute these phenomena as having been caused by global warming, still others support this theory. Stronger storms such as hurricanes are created over warmer waters. Global warming has warmed the oceans, and hence the storms forming over these warmer temperatures are much stronger.

We must be careful not to overlook these events as something normal. While natural disasters do occur, the extent to which these storms have grown may be a bit excessive. Watch An Inconvenient Truth to see Hurricane Katrina and how it became much stronger after passing over the Gulf of Mexico.

*CNN newscast and wikipedia.org used as sources in the creation of this article.