By: Shanmukh Bachhu, Ajitesh Sharma, Adamya Singh
Credit: Unsplash
Every month, it seems a new catastrophic storm or event has decimated cities and families. The dark reality of climate change is ever-closer, with climate disasters happening more frequently and with more severity, it is necessary for us to act as a society to prevent these disasters.
But how much work has actually been done?
Goal
Recently, the world's largest powers met in India, New Delhi to discuss the future of climate disasters. Called the G20 summit, countries set initiatives to go net-zero by a certain year, hoping to prevent future disasters from occurring.
When CO2 or other greenhouse gases enter the air, they act as a blanket that traps in heat from the sun's rays, ultimately heating earth’s waters. Due to the heating of the oceans, global currents shift, ultimately changing wind patterns and thus our climate. That is why it is important to stop the growth of these compounds in our atmosphere from a natural level. Our society runs on fossil fuels, and when these fuels are burned they release tons of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the air, ultimately strengthening the risks of climate change.
Events like the G20 summit act as a way for countries to set goals cooperatively to save human civilization. By setting these goals, countries invest billions of dollars into clean energy solutions, hoping to shift their energy supply from fossil fuels to something renewable, like solar energy.
But who actually helps put these plans into action?
Nonprofits and other small organizations use teamwork to help solve the world’s biggest climate challenges. For example, The Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) helps fund and accelerate solar development. This involves making solar energy cheaper and more efficient. Nonprofits like these help make clean energy a viable solution compared to fossil fuels, helping to convince companies to transition.
Technology
Advancements in technologies have also helped in the prevention of climate disasters. Engineers from a variety of industries have come together to do their part in preventing climate disasters. Electrical Engineers for example allow us as a society to move away from fossil fuels to solar energy by innovating and making solar panels overall more efficient, helping speed up our goals for net-zero emissions.
An example of a climate disaster preventing technology is Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS). The CCS can be implemented in multiple circumstances from being on top of a factory to capture all of the CO2 emissions produced, to being implemented next to a house in order to capture existing CO2 from the atmosphere.
These technologies have a lot of room to grow. Big CO2 emitters could create a larger pipeline network connected to factories that would ultimately lead to an abandoned oil field.
Smaller CO2 capture machines near residential areas could be disposed of in a certain bin that would go to this abandoned field for secure storage.
CCS would help decrease the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere, which would in turn bring Earth’s temperature back into a natural level, overall preventing climate disasters. But work still needs to be done for CCS to be adapted into society, with engineers needing to make this solution cheap, agile, durable, and effective for use.
Early Warning Systems (EWS) is another example of technology fighting against climate disasters. Early Warning Systems are an integrated part of disaster risk assessment, communication, preparedness, hazard monitoring, and forecasting. These procedures and systems provide people, governments, and corporations, among other organizations the ability to respond quickly to reduce the likelihood of disasters before they happen. Over the last several decades, advancements in technology have refined and broadened the scope of EWS to include a variety of additional threats, such as flooding, wildfires, and glacier melting. One of the seven global objectives stated by The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030) is to increase the availability of disaster risk information and multi-hazard early warning systems.
To identify weather patterns that may be disastrous is the hard part, but with growing concern arrives more specialized technology developed by NASA called the NISAR spacecraft, a satellite designed to detect natural hazards and monitor the impact of melting land ice on sea level rise. The satellite, equipped with the largest reflector antenna ever launched by NASA, will use synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to track subtle changes in Earth's surface. The satellite will detect movements of the planet's surface as small as 0.4 inches over areas about half a tennis court. Launched no earlier than 2022, the satellite will scan the entire globe every 12 days over its three-year primary mission, imaging the Earth's land, ice sheets, and sea ice on every orbit. NISAR will provide high-resolution time-lapse radar imagery of such shifts, providing valuable insights into Earth processes such as glacier flow rates, ice sheet dynamics, and earthquakes and volcanoes.
However, simply recognition and acknowledgement of climate disasters may not be enough, we must instead focus on the initial causes.The majority of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide are caused by the extraction, production, and processing of minerals, oil, gas, and other raw materials. Using artificial intelligence (AI), the firm CarbonChain creates "digital twins" of each piece of heavy industry equipment to simulate supply networks. These models may be employed by businesses to profile their current emissions and find areas where they might be reduced. According to CarbonChain, its precision is such that it can determine the precise amount of carbon produced throughout the procedures that culminate in the coffee cup sitting on your desk.
How You Can Help
You’ve already helped by reading this article. By grasping the information stated, you can share the message of climate change and disasters.
But how else can you help?
We’ve all heard it, “Close the tap” or “Close the lights when you’re not in the room.”
These do help, but you can do more than these.
Recycling your things. Call your local area. Ask for a recycling bin.
Get Solar Panels or another renewable source of energy. Try to research them at least.
Use Public Transportation. Carpool with your friends.
Spread the message! With more people awakening to the intensity of climate change, change will happen! Help campaign for environmental aid laws. The world now needs your help!
Preventing a climate disaster is a team effort, so it is up to us as a society to act inorder to prevent a future climate disaster for the next generation.
Works Cited:
Angela Solikova. (June 2024). G20 and the Ongoing Fight to Contain Climate Change. https://ris.org.in/newsletter/RIS%20Latest%20Publications/2020/April/G20%20Digest/G20%20Digest%20March-may%202020_vol_1_No_5/pdf/Angela%20Solikova.pdf
Emily Acton, Dan Wellers, Michael Rander, Fawn Fitter. (June 2024). Emerging Technologies to Tackle Climate Change. https://www.sap.com/insights/viewpoints/by-land-sea-and-air-emerging-technologies-to-tackle-climate-change.html
US Department of Energy. (June 2024). Solar Energy Technologies Office. https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-energy-technologies-office
United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). (June 2024). Overview of Greenhouse Gasses. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (July 2023). Early Warning Systems.
NASA. Major Earth Satellite to Track Disasters, Effects of Climate Change. (March 2021)