Nitu.B


 * __Topic: Is weather becoming more extreme?__**

Hurricanes and floods are becoming more and more frequent all over the world… or we just never noticed them before. Consrv.ca.gov says that research shows that earthquakes ‘seem’ like they’re becoming more and more frequent but really, we never noticed them before.

“**Research shows that earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have remained fairly constant throughout the century and have actually decreased in recent years. However, since there are a greater number of seismological centers and instruments capable of locating many small earthquakes that went undetected in earlier years, it may seem as if there are more.”** ** - **// California //// Geological Survey/California Geology, USGS, Arkansas Center for Earthquake Education and Technology Transfer, Governor's Office of Emergency Services and more. //

From floods to major earthquakes, it IS getting worse. Beginning from the very first recorded earthquake, which dates back to July, 1502 that was discovered by Christopher Columbus up until the magnitude 7 earthquake in Haiti getting worse particularly due to the warming of the ocean waters. Hurricanes usually occur over warm tropical waters. The big reason for these hurricanes is due to the sliding of rocks. When two boundary plates are sliding against each other, causing a great amount of friction, the rocks beneath begin to break. When all that pressure is released, the earthquake occurs. The shaking of the ground during an earthquake is because of this friction. Floods naturally occur due to heavy rainfall, overflowing of the waters, or when water hits high wind pressures. The main cause is usually overflowing of the water because of heavy rainfall prior to the flood. This goes back to El Nino. El Nino is when clouds form over top of a warm ocean and the warm waters are turned around towards the east. This causes the cold water to stop and the moisture filled clouds let out precipitation. In the first paragraph we talked about how earthquakes are becoming more and more frequent, but what about droughts and floods? Droughts are now a common thing especially on the eastern side of the globe (Australia, China, India, and Africa). The reason for more droughts is because the green house gases are emitting too much carbon dioxide which is causing the weather patterns to change. In some areas there may be more precipitation and others there is no precipitation at all. In areas that don’t get enough rain is where the droughts will occur. Temperature rises also play a big role in droughts. The rising of the temperature make the climate hotter and dryer, therefore occurring in droughts. Temperature extremes are greater than they have been historically, due to global warming. The thinning of the ozone layer is allowing the stronger rays of the sun to emit and bring about more heat, resulting in increasing temperatures.

All in all weather in some ways IS getting extreme. The biggest contributors to this are greenhouse gases and US! Temperatures are increasing due to global warming and the increasing of the temperatures are causing droughts! All of these events lead up to one another from earthquakes to warmer summers; they are all becoming more extreme!

__**BIBLIOGRAPHY:**__

**[|2) http://www.extremescience.com/zoom/index.php/weather] **  
 * __1)[|http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2010rja6.php] __**
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 * __4) http://www.consrv.ca.gov/index/Earthquakes/Pages/qh_earthquakes_myths.aspx __**
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