Gonu Heralds Dangers of Global Climate Change

When Super Cyclone Gonu entered the Gulf of Oman last week, it was notable for a number of reasons. A powerful tropical cyclone will gain people’s attention no matter where it appears, and Gonu, with winds of 160 miles per hour and a low pressure of 920 millibars, Gonu was as strong as they come. The strength of the storm was enough to raise fears of death and destruction. And a powerful tropical cyclone bearing down on an area that moves most of the world’s oil was a cause for concern in oil markets around the globe.

Opinion: Gonu Heralds Dangers of Global Climate Change

But while all of those were important reasons to pay attention to Gonu, one reason stood out: Cyclone Gonu was the first — the only — recorded cyclone to enter the Gulf of Oman.

We have seen many storms showing up where they aren’t supposed to in recent years. In March of 2004, Cyclone Catarina formed in the south Atlantic, the first cyclone recorded to develop there. It hit Brazil, killing three and doing $320 million in damage. One year later, Hurricane Vince formed over the Azores, heading east into Spain. It was the first recorded cyclone to hit the Iberian Peninsula and developed into a tropical cyclone further east in the Atlantic than any storm ever recorded. In May of 2006 Super Typhoon Chanchu formed. It was only the second storm of that magnitude ever recorded in the South China Sea. It killed 104 and left $1.2 billion in damage in the Philippines, Taiwan, China and Japan. And Gonu has now left scores dead and millions of dollars in damage.

One of the great dangers of global climate change is that it moves weather patterns. Cyclone Gonu was a category 2 storm when it hit Oman. No doubt at least a few storms of that magnitude will hit the United States this year. But when tropical cylones hit areas that are not used to them, the level of destruction can be magnified. Miami is prepared for a hurricane, hardened to the possibility that in any given year, a severe storm will pummel the Florida peninsula. Boston is not. And yet, as we watch tropical storms push further out from the tropics, the odds continue to increase that Boston, Philadelphia and New York City will see a hurricane in the near future. And the hotter the oceans get, the higher the odds get.

That does not mean, of course, that hurricanes are the only danger that faces us. A long-lasting drought has descended over southern Africa, over the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia and over most of the southwestern United States. Indeed, drought is hitting closer to home in the Dakotas and on the Iron Range, and Lake Superior is at historically low levels.

The effect of drought can extend beyond the obvious. The genocide in Darfur was precipitated by the drying up of Lake Chad and corresponding desertification in the region, causing food shortages and battles over the remaining scraps of arable land.

Now that global warming denial is no longer in vogue, those opposed to actually doing something about the problem have taken to arguing that the effects of climate change may be neutral, or even positive. They point to the fact that climate change may make parts of Canada and Russia arable that currently are too cold to support agriculture. But this ignores the fact that we have built cities, roads nd infrastructure based on the climate that has prevailed throughout the last 10,000 years. It’s doubtful that Yellowknife would become the breadbasket to the world, given the soil composition there. But even assuming that the land there turned out to be far more fertile than expected, more than 19,000 people would need to move there to process the food. Roads and railways would need to be built to move the food out. And the food would need to go south quickly to the United States, where people would be starving, given that the wheat belt would have moved into northern Canada.

Global climate change is a problem not just because Earth is getting warmer, but because that warmth is reshuffling the deck — slowly turning Nebraska into a desert and Oman into a hurricane zone, while deglaciating the Alps and truncating Minnesota’s ice fishing season. We may not know exactly what changes are in store for our planet’s climate, but those changes will alter how we live, everywhere we live.