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DHANUSHKODI
It is a town/village at the southern tip of
Rameswaram island, on the eastern
coast of the Tamil Nadu state of India.
Dhanushkodi was a flourishing tourist
and pilgrimage town
1964 Supercyclone
Following this disaster, the
Government of Madras declared
Dhanushkodi as Ghost town and
unfit for living.
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climate change is not a distant
threat, but just waiting to
happen
Small Islands and Climate Change

Small Islands and Climate Change
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IF ALL THE ICE MELTED
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North America
The entire Atlantic seaboard
would vanish, along with
Florida and the Gulf Coast.
In California, San Francisco's
hills would become a cluster
of islands and the Central
Valley a giant bay.
The Gulf of California would
stretch north past the latitude
of San Diegonot that
there'd be a San Diego.

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South America
The Amazon Basin in the
north and the Paraguay River
Basin in the south would
become Atlantic inlets, wiping
out Buenos Aires, coastal
Uruguay, and most of
Paraguay.
Mountainous stretches would
survive along the Caribbean
coast and in Central America.
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EUROPE

London? A memory.
Venice? Reclaimed by the Adriatic
Sea.
Netherlands will have long since
surrendered to the sea, and
most of Denmark will be gone too.
Meanwhile, the Mediterranean's
expanding waters will also have
swelled the Black and Caspian Seas.
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Australia
Predominantly desert, the continent
would gain a new inland seabut it
would lose much of the narrow coastal
strip where four out of five Australians
now live.

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Africa
Compared with other continents,
Africa would lose less of its land to
the ultimate sea-level catastrophe,
but Earths rising heat might make
much of it uninhabitable.

In Egypt, Alexandria
and Cairo will be swamped by the
intruding Mediterranean.
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East Antarctica
The East Antarctica ice sheet is so
largeit contains four-fifths of all the ice
on Earththat it might seem
unmeltable. It survived earlier warm
periods intact. Lately it seems to be
thickening slightlybecause of global
warming. The warmer atmosphere
holds more water vapor, which falls as
snow on East Antarctica. But even this
behemoth is unlikely to survive a return
to an Eocene Climate.
West Antarctica
The warming ocean is melting the floating
ice sheet itself from below, causing it to
collapse. Since 1992 it has averaged a
net loss of 65 million metric tons of ice
a year.
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Call it freak weather or climate change, but, sleepy, dusty, tropical Kommera
village in Andhra Pradesh morphed into midwinter Kashmir white, cold and
unbelievable! A thick blanket of overnight snow greeted a stupefied Kommera
and six other villages in Rangareddy district on the last day of January. The
usually drought-prone area, a mere 100 km from Hyderabad, was buried under
a two-feet-thick rarest-of-the-rare blanket of snow. The blizzard had
meteorologists and climate scientists pulling their hair in shock and disbelief.
The tribal hilly interiors of Hyderabad had a similar Kashmir moment a decade-
and-a-half ago.
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El Nino, La Nina
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What are El Nio and La Nia?
El Nio and La Nia are complex weather
patterns resulting from variations in ocean
temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific.
El Nio and La Nia events are extremely
important parts of Earths climate. They
are the dominant mode of natural climate
variability on annual, multiyear and
decadal timeframes.
El Nio and La Nia events impact
everything from drought and rainfall to
surface temperatures around the globe.
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HIGH PRESSURE vs LOW
PRESSURE

Pressure can be thought of as the weight of the
air above a given point. pressure decreases with
height above sea level.

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Low pressure
systems, also called
cyclones, have air
moving
counterclockwise
and into the center
in the Northern
Hemisphere. Low
pressure areas are
generally associated
with clouds,
precipitation and
storminess.
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The criteria followed by the Meteorological Department of India to classify
the low pressure systems in the Bay of Bengal and in the Arabian Sea as
adopted by the World Meteorological Organisation (W.M.O.) are:

Types of Disturbances

Associated wind speed in the
Circulation

1. Low Pressure Area
2. Depression
3. Deep Depression
4. Cyclonic Storm
5. Severe Cyclonic Storm
6. Very Severe Cyclonic Storm
7. Super Cyclonic Storm
Less than 17 knots ( < 31 kmph)
17 to 27 knots ( 31 to 49 kmph)
28 to 33 knots ( 50 to 61 kmph)
34 to 47 knots ( 62 to 88 kmph)
48 to 63 knots ( 89 to 118 kmph)
64 to 119 knots ( 119 to 221 kmph)
120 knots and above ( 222 kmph
and above)
1 knot - 1.85 km per hour
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High pressure
systems, also called
anticyclones, have
air moving clockwise
and outward from
the center in the
Northern
Hemisphere. High
pressure areas are
generally associated
with fair, clear
weather.

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GLOBAL WIND
CIRCULATION
The underlying cause of
our global wind circulation
is the unequal heating of
Earth's surface.

Unequal heating creates
pressure differences.

where intense surface
heating occurs - warm
air rises creating low
pressure
where intense surface
cooling occurs - air
cools, gets heavier,
sinks and creates high
pressure
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The region of Earth receiving the Sun's direct
rays is the equator. Here, air is heated and
rises, leaving low pressure areas behind.
Moving to about thirty degrees north and
south of the equator, the warm air from the
equator begins to cool and sink. Between
thirty degrees latitude and the equator, most
of the cooling sinking air moves back to the
equator. The rest of the air flows toward the
poles. The air movements toward the equator
are called TRADE WINDS- warm, steady
breezes that blow almost continuously.
Between thirty and sixty degrees latitude, the winds
that move toward the poles appear to curve to the
east. Because winds are named from the direction
in which they originate, these winds are called
prevailing WESTERLIES. Prevailing westerlies in
the Northern Hemisphere are responsible for many
of the weather movements across the United States
and Canada.

At about sixty degrees latitude in both
hemispheres, the prevailing westerlies join with
POLAR EASTERLIES to reduce upward motion. The
polar easterlies form when the atmosphere over the
poles cools. This cool air then sinks and spreads
over the surface.
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Thermal Circulations - circulations created by
changes in air temperature

Unequal heating between land and water along a coast create unequal
pressures that cause pressure gradient force to move air from high to
low pressure areas. During the day, the sea breeze develops and at
night, these locations experience the land breeze. This type of
circulation is also found near large lakes and is called the lake/land
breeze.
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The Asian Monsoon
During the summer, the continent develops low pressure in response to heating
and the airflow reverses. Moisture-laden air from the ocean is brought inland
where it rises over the terrain and produces extremely large amounts of rainfall.

During the winter, the large continent of Asia gets extremely cold and the Siberian
high pressure develops. Air flow is offshore and dry.





Monsoon is a term derived form the Arabic word
Mausim, meaning season. It was first used by
Arabic navigators to describe the seasonal winds of
the Arabian Sea.

These winds blow from the north-east for one half
of the year and from the south-west for the other
half.
Monsoon winds
blow from cold to
warm regions
because cold air
takes up more space
than warm air
Being a tropical monsoon country
there are two monsoon seasons.
The South West (summer)
monsoon has warm winds blowing
from Indian Ocean. Its span is
June to September, with 75 % of
the annual rainfall in India. It
varies from 10 cm in western
Rajasthan to over 900 cm in
Meghalaya.

Summer monsoon
North- East (winter) monsoon is
characterized by a dry continental
air mass blowing from the vast
Siberian high pressure area from
December to March. The rainfall
includes snowfall during winter
monsoon which is of the order of
1000 km2 in India. This is also known
as Retreating monsoon.
Winter monsoon
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EL NINO- SOUTHERN
OSCILLATIONS
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EL NINO- SOUTHERN
OSCILLATIONS
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EL NINO- SOUTHERN
OSCILLATIONS

El Nio and La Nia
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EL NINO- SOUTHERN
OSCILLATIONS
The name El Nio (referring to the
Christ child) was originally given by
Peruvian fishermen to a warm
current that appeared every year
around Christmas. What we now
call El Nio seemed to them like a
stronger version of the same event,
and the usage of the term evolved
over time until it only referred to the
irregular strong events. It wasn't
until the 1960s that people started
realizing this was not just a local
Peruvian occurrence, but was
associated with changes over the
entire tropical Pacific and beyond.
In effect, El Nio was too big to be
seen as the mega-event it is; it just
seemed like a lot of unconnected
unusual weather events around the
world.

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EL NINO- SOUTHERN
OSCILLATIONS
El Nio and La Nia
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El Nio and La Nia relation to Indian Monsoons

El Nio and La Nia are defined as sustained sea surface temperature
anomalies of magnitude greater than 0.5C across the central tropical
Pacific Ocean.


When the condition is met for a period of less than five months, it is
classified as El Nio or La Nia conditions; if the anomaly persists for
five months or longer, it is classified as an El Nio or La Nia episode.
Historically, it has occurred at irregular intervals of 2-7 years and has
usually lasted one or two years.

The first signs of an El Nio are:

Rise in air pressure over the Indian Ocean, Indonesia, and Australia

Fall in air pressure over Tahiti and the rest of the central and eastern
Pacific Ocean

Trade winds in the south Pacific weaken or head east



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For India a continuous and homogeneous record is available
since 1871.

Monsoon rainfall is increasing (+10 to +12 % per century)
along the west coast, north Andhra Pradesh and in northwest
India. It is decreasing (-6 to 8% per century) over east
Madhya Pradesh and adjoining areas, northeast India and parts
of Gujarat and Kerala.

A weak monsoon, is a result of a large negative Southern
Oscillation Index (SOI) and El Nino event.

A strong monsoon, is a result of a large positive SOI and
the absence of El Nino event.

During the period 18711999, 11 of 21 drought years were
El Nino years.

The periods 1895-1932 and 1965-1987 were characterized by
frequent droughts.

The periods 1872-1894 and 1933-1964 were practically
drought free




RISE IN MALARIA PARASITE, DENGUE,
CHIKUNGUNYA OR YELLOW FEVER VIRUS
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Global Warming May Worsen
Effects of El Nio, La Nia
Events

Most people dont know the definition of El
Nio or its mirror image, La Nia, and
truthfully, most people dont much care.
Global warming has begun to change the
playing field on which El Nio and La Nia
operate, just as it's changing the
background conditions that give rise to our
everyday weather.
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AFTER THE OCEAN, ICE IS THE BIGGEST WATER
RESERVOIR on the planet.


There are more than five million cubic miles of it, and no
one really knows how long it would take to melt it all.
Probably more than 5,000 years, some scientists say.

But if we burn all the Earths supply of coal, oil, and gas,
adding some five trillion more tons of carbon to the
atmosphere, well create a very hot planet, with an
average temperature of perhaps 80 degrees Fahrenheit
instead of the current 58. Large swaths of it might
become too hot for humans. And it would likely be ice
free for the first time in more than 30 million years.
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ASIA
Land now inhabited by 600
million Chinese would flood,
as would all of Bangladesh,
population 160 million,
and much of coastal India.
The inundation of the Mekong
Delta would leave Cambodia's
Cardamom Mountains stranded
as an island.
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Free Powerpoint Templates
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Free Powerpoint Templates
We are sending out an SOS to the world
on behalf of Small Island Developing
States. Our "message in the bottle?" We
are all connected.

The challenges faced by islands will face
us all. So, every action we take to reduce
waste and mitigate climate change
counts. Join and pledge to make a
difference by taking action for World
Environment Day.
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