Chris Hammond

Below, I reflect on the text and have expanded further by reading more widely, answering the questions posted for section 1.5 reading.

What major climate anomalies and episodic events occurred in 1998?  

Throughout 1998, the world experienced a record-breaking rise in global average temperature across the planet, triggering cascading extreme and devastating weather events. Such an increase in temperature was driven by a cyclical climate oscillation known as El Niño, belonging to a periodic warming of the central and eastern sections of the Pacific Ocean (NOAA, 2015). However, emerging research indicates climate change may exacerbate the severity and intensity of the effects of El Niño (Wang, 2019). As a result, devastating floods, droughts, and heatwaves wreaked havoc across the planet during the 98 El Niño event, and have become serious cause for concern for the future.

The magnitude of the human cost was catastrophic; over 23,000 people are estimated to have died from natural disasters influenced by 1998’s El Niño (Van Trotsenburg, 2015). Even more, tens of millions were impacted as a result of displacement, drought, failure of food systems, and economic loss, with the Global South most acutely affected. Placing the cost of this event in monetary terms, estimates vary by study, with one study published in Science estimating upwards of $5.9 trillion USD in global income losses (Callahan & Mankin, 2023).

What environmental hazards are associated with climate change, and who is most affected? 

Answering the first part of the question, environmental hazards associated with climate change are numerous, including floods, monsoons, hurricanes, and extreme weather related to intense precipitation, which are influenced by a greater volume of atmospheric moisture due to warming, occurring at a rate of 7% for every 1 °C increase (Bao et al., 2017; Panthou et al., 2014). Conversely, while greater atmospheric moisture capacity fuels extreme precipitation, it also causes greater evaporation of moisture from soil, resulting in droughts, destruction of soil and croplands, loss of vegetation, and then cascading into destabilization and potential collapse of food systems with far-reaching socioeconomic consequences. Even more, with rising climate and increasing intensity of monsoons and hurricanes, storm surges coinciding with heat induced expansion of warming waters both contribute to coastal erosion, placing in jeopardy all inhabitants within low-lying coastal regions.

Throughout chapter 1, examples of far-reaching devastation due to environmental hazards were reviewed. One which stood out to me was the example of Bangladesh, epitomizing how vulnerable certain regions are, with the 1970s storm surge disaster causing upwards of 250,000 people to drown (Houghton, 2015, pp. 3-4). And this brings me to the latter part of the question – these hazards are most likely to affect the Global South, which often do not have the economic or technological means to mitigate the effects of climate change, but are more likely to suffer from its effects. By contrast, the Global North, or the so-called “developed nations,” are most responsible for anthropogenic climate change and historically also responsible for the extractive and destructive colonial systems that have inhibited the development of much of the Global South.

How do volcanic eruptions affect temperature extremes?  

Volcanic eruptions, in proportion to the magnitude of the eruption and gas and ash released, affect temperature extremes by causing short-term cooling due to the injection of aerosols like sulphur dioxide and fine particulate matter into the stratosphere, causing reflection of solar radiation back into space (USGS, 2015). This can affect regional and global temperature, with varying extremes which tend to push more towards cooler temperatures in the short-term (USGS). While this may cause a temporary reduction in temperature, it is transient, in that it masks the effects of anthropogenic emissions, which continue even during a period of cooling (IPCC, 2023, Ch 6). As volcanic aerosolized fine particulate eventually falls back to the surface, warming resumes to the underlying trendline in relation to emissions released into the atmosphere, which continues upward during the period of cooling.

What are adaptation and mitigation?  

Responding to climate change involves strategies revolving around both adaptation and mitigation. Briefly summarized, adaptation can be defined as methods of adjusting to the changes expected in the future due to climate change (NASA, 2024) Mitigation involves methods, strategies, and actions to reduce the anthropogenic causes of climate change, whether it’s lowering emissions, utilizing carbon sinks, among other methods (NASA, 2024).

Adding my perspective, I can’t help but think about how the parasitic capitalist class, largely responsible for climate change, is adapting by finding new ways of exploitation. In Canada, warming of the Arctic has opened up new frontiers for resource exploitation (Hanaček, 2021); instead of easing the causes of climate change, exploitative industries will further contribute to environmental degradation and destruction.

What is the greenhouse effect?  

They say the best way to determine comprehension of a topic is to be able to explain it back to a layperson in simple, intelligible, and comprehensible terms. With that in mind, the greenhouse effect can be explained as the way in which solar radiation from the sun interacts with the atmosphere and surface of the planet. Naturally, when solar radiation lands upon the earth’s surface, it is absorbed, converted into heat, and emitted back into the atmosphere. Nonetheless, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, largely carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapour, among other gases, act as a thermal blanket absorbing infrared radiation, radiating some of it back towards the surface of the earth. As greater concentration of greenhouse gases are emitted into the atmosphere, the rate of heat retention increases, thus resulting in a rise in global average temperatures.

What is the ‘runaway’ greenhouse effect?  

The runaway greenhouse effect is a process that occurs by way of a feedback loop; in summary, upon passing a temperature threshold a chain reaction of events unfolds where increasing temperatures cause an exponential level of evaporation of water bodies and oceans; this evaporation contributes to rising temperatures, which in turn causes further evaporation. These two processes feed into each other, causing a runaway effect where the planet essentially boils. The text uses Venus as an example of the runaway greenhouse effect, where its atmospheric composition in relation to its proximity to the sun has allowed for the conditions of exponential evaporation and heating.

While the author states this cannot happen on Earth, I would argue that it is likely to occur, but in the extremely distant future. Drawing on my experience from an introductory Astronomy class during my undergraduate years, I remember learning that the sun’s luminosity is gradually increasing at a rate of 8% every billion years as our star converts hydrogen to helium by way of nuclear fusion (Earle, 2021, pp. 61–62). While the timescale is significant, in approximately 1.1 billion years, the sun’s increasing luminosity will raise the Earth’s average temperature substantially, moving us beyond a threshold that may be the beginning of a runaway greenhouse effect.

Reference list

Bao, J., Sherwood, S.C., Alexander, L.V. and Evans, J.P. (2017). Future increases in extreme precipitation exceed observed scaling rates. Nature Climate Change, 7(2), pp.128–132. doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3201.

Callahan, C.W. and Mankin, J.S. (2023). Persistent effect of El Niño on global economic growth. Science, 380(6649), pp.1064–1069. doi:https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adf2983.

Earle, S. (2021). Changes in Solar Output and in the Earth’s Atmosphere. In: Environmental Geology. [online] Thompson Rivers University. Available at: https://environmental-geol.pressbooks.tru.ca/ [Accessed 17 Oct. 2025].

Hanaček, K., Kröger, M., Scheidel, A., Rojas, F. and Martinez-Alier, J. (2022). On thin ice – The Arctic commodity extraction frontier and environmental conflicts. Ecological Economics, 191, p.107247. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107247.

Houghton, J. (2015). Global Warming. 5th ed. [online] Cambridge University Press, pp.1–33. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/highereducation/books/global-warming/C1706360E0FEC4F43D47392D8F9EECF0#contents [Accessed 16 Oct. 2025].

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2023) ‘Short-lived Climate Forcers’, in Climate Change 2021 – The Physical Science Basis: Working Group I Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 817–922.

NASA (2024). Mitigation and Adaptation. [online] NASA. Available at: https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/adaptation-mitigation/.

NOAA (2015). El Niño | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. [online] www.noaa.gov. Available at: https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/weather-atmosphere/el-nino.

Panthou, G., Mailhot, A., Laurence, E. and Talbot, G. (2014). Relationship between Surface Temperature and Extreme Rainfalls: A Multi-Time-Scale and Event-Based Analysis. Journal of Hydrometeorology, [online] 15(5), pp.1999–2011. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/24914558.

Van Trotsenburg, A. (2015). We must prepare now for another major El Niño. [online] World Bank Blogs. Available at: https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/eastasiapacific/we-must-prepare-now-another-major-el-nino?utm_source=chatgpt.com [Accessed 18 Oct. 2025].

Wang, B., Luo, X., Yang, Y.-M., Sun, W., Cane, M.A., Cai, W., Yeh, S.-W. and Liu, J. (2019). Historical change of El Niño properties sheds light on future changes of extreme El Niño. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, [online] 116(45), pp.22512–22517. doi:https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1911130116.