2015's Record Heat: It Will Soon Be 'normal

Tommy Purdy

Mr. Ippolito

Biology D-Even

2 December, 2016

Citation

Sumner, Thomas. "2015's Record Heat: It Will Soon Be 'normal'" Science News for Students. N.p., 30 Nov. 2016. Web. 01 Dec. 2016.

Hyperlink

https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/2015s-record-heat-it-will-soon-be-normal

2015’s record heat: It will soon be ‘normal’

   

    In the article, “2015’s record heat: It will soon be ‘normal’,” by Thomas Sumner, the reader learns many interesting things about how the odd winter heat in 2015 will be a normal part of our lives as soon as the 2020’s. In the article, Sumner talks about the known reason for global warming, which is that greenhouse gasses are being “dumped” into air which is creating the average temperatures to rise. Scientists are claiming that these new temperatures the, “new normal.” Sophie Lewis, a climate scientist in Australia, and her team have been conducting a lot of research to learn the truth about the future of earth's climate. They knew that the temperature in the future depends on the amount of greenhouse gasses, especially carbon dioxides. By figuring out the amount of carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere, they could were able to make a rough estimate about what the climate will be like in upcoming years. They learned that, if the carbon dioxide levels stay at the place they are, winters will be as warm as 2015’s almost always. They also learned that even if carbon dioxide levels are drastically cut, by 2040 the winters will be just like that of 2015. Another interesting idea to think about that Sumner ends at the end is that completely warm winters will be not that uncommon in the 2020’s if everything goes the way it should.

    After completing this article, it makes me think about how different society will be in the 2020’s if everything happens as it’s supposed to. The data that Lewis collected is just one more proof that the climate is changing because of greenhouse gases, and it is changing a lot faster than originally believed. Now that we know Lewis’s data, people should expect the climate to change very fast. If the data ends up being true, we can expect winter coats to be almost never worn in areas such as the East coast because the winters will feel like autumn, like the last one. Another interesting thing to think about is how climate change will affect this upcoming winter. If it is as warm as the last, maybe the climate is warming up even faster than originally believed. Also, on the article, there is a diagram of the whole world’s winter last year. According to it, about 80% of the world last winter was warmer than usual, and about 15% of earth had its warmest ever winter. This means that climate change isn’t happening in only industrialized areas, but throughout the whole world in every single society across it.

    Overall, this article was pretty good, however, it did have some issues worth mentioning that could have been better. One aspect of it that was good was its ability to translate Lewis’s experiment into something that average people can understand. Often, scientific articles use words that nobody understands which leads to a lack of knowledge learned or a misunderstanding. This article, however, keeps the words easier to understand. Another good aspect of the article is that it mentions if the data by Lewis doesn’t go to plan. In articles about an experiment done, they never say what would happen if the information is false. In this article however, Sumner does mention what would happen if the data from the experiment was much less then thought, the warmness of the 2015 winter will be regular in the 2040’s. One bad aspect of the article was the length of it. Sumner could have made the article longer and went into deeper information about the experiment that Lewis conducted. If he had done that, the overall quality of the article would have been much better.