STORMS - Countdown to a Catastrophe Pt. 3 | Full Documentary

this is a story of molten rock wind and fire of creation and destruction it is the story of the astonishing forces that repeatedly reshape our world they work together are mutually dependent and enhance each other scientists are working to understand these interrelationships so that we can be better protected because if the earth were an Apple its crust would be no thicker than the skin and on it we erect skyscrapers and settle in the shadow of fire-spitting mountains volcanoes earthquakes and storms they'll be with us always so we have to protect ourselves from their violent tempers because although its beauty is incomparable our wild planet is no gentle giant [Music] [Music] [Music] when the Department of Commerce propeller plane is rolled out of the hangar it does not bode well for the people of Florida or even for those as far away as New York [Music] a hurricane currently causing death and destruction in the Caribbean could soon bear down on them too the crew onboard the aircraft is embarking on a veritable kamikaze mission [Music] we are destined for the hurricane itself as it moves on its relentless course towards the US mainland residents of the coastal regions begin implementing their evacuation routine but to be able to predict how the monster storm will give Elam where exactly it will make landfall and how it will take shape the pilot must steer his aircraft right into the eye of the store more precisely the eye wall this ring of vertical clouds extreme rainfall and storm winds surrounding the calm eye reveals the real force of the monster the aircraft navigates several times through the wall only by determining the exact force of the eye wall winds can a reliable prognosis on the Hurricanes development and course be made every two seconds the sensors take air pressure humidity and wind velocity measurements meanwhile the stormy weather has begun to thrash the Florida coast whoever has failed to bring their boat to safety in time is in for a nasty surprise area's most at-risk have long been evacuated where these places will be and who should leave them our prognosis made by the National Hurricane Center in Miami James Franklin and his team work day in day out to be able to forecast the development of a hurricane more precisely hurricanes are very different in terms of their shapes we have some that are maybe 60 70 miles across and others that are 600 or 700 miles across so there's a tremendous scope of the size of these storms to some extent size doesn't change very rapidly storms that start small tend to remain small storms that are large tend to remain large but the details of the structure is what's really difficult but the peril lies in these very details they ultimately determine the scale of damage and loss and not only can hurricanes bring large-scale devastation they also occur with far greater regularity than earthquakes or volcano eruptions and thus cost more human lives all told but what exactly are storms what happens precisely when a storm is brewing the surface of the earth is covered by cities deserts green forests and bodies of water the air above these different areas is warm to varying degrees for example over land the air warms during the day more quickly than over water the warmer air masses rise more quickly which means that the air pressure is higher in the skies above land than above the sea when equalizes this pressure differential always moving from the higher to the lower pressure as wind moves high above from the land to the sea the air just above the surface closed in the opposite direction a sea breeze is boring the wind equalizes varying pressure levels globally as the planet rotates air masses on their way from high to low pressure areas are sent into a spin in the northern hemisphere the winds are diverted to the right in the southern hemisphere to the left gigantic rotating storm systems are sent racing across the earth when a storm system like this has reached hurricane force and is heading for the east coast of the United States it's time for the hurricane hunters to take off because without the data gathered at the center of the storm it would be impossible to calculate the development of a hurricane in progress Jim McFadden is responsible for the whole operation we don't know what's going on out over the ocean we've got to get an airplane out there and it's got to make drops and it's got to collect those data and you got to get those transmitted off the airplane so that they can go into the models in October 2012 those models signaled a red alert for New York City and the entire eastern seaboard hurricane sandy was already raging in the Caribbean leaving a high death toll and horrible destruction in its wake with the super storm hit the coast at full force or run out of steam like hurricane irene the year before it had traveled offshore the forecasted landfall and flooding never materialized well the mayor's large-scale evacuation effort again proved unnecessary the time for evacuation is over everyone should now go inside and be prepared to stay inside until weather conditions improve which won't likely be until Sunday afternoon but it soon became clear that the city wouldn't be getting off so lightly this time the hours of anxious apprehension followed waiting for Sandy to strike with all her might 95 mile-per-hour winds battered New York City and a record deluge flooded entire neighborhoods meanwhile sandy was being trapped in real-time from outer space this data was added to that of the Hurricane Hunters and of the 20 radar stations along the east coast all of this information converged at the National Hurricane Center in Miami were all tropical storms 250 kilometers from the coast or closer are observed live the goal is to be able to warn the public earlier and to better coordinate evacuation efforts we want to do your best job you want to make the best forecast you can every time you sit in that chair because you know that so much depends upon it more than 47 million people from Texas to Maine are in harm's way of hurricanes and their number is growing the incidence of typhoons and cyclones is also increasing worldwide but what's the difference between a hurricane and a typhoon and what constitutes a cyclone the answer is simple they are different regional designations for the same phenomenon a hurricane over the Atlantic is a typhoon when it rages in the western Pacific and cyclones plague the Australian coastal region there are two prerequisites for hurricane formation an ocean temperature of over 26 degrees Celsius and powerful trade winds that sweep the Earth's surface these precise conditions are only met within a narrow strip between the fifth and twentieth parallels north and south between early June and the end of November ocean temperatures are high enough to allow sufficient water to vaporize the resulting humid warm air rises upwards where it is condensed to clouds which are then made to rotate by the trade winds when the winds in the eyewall reaches speed of at least 118 kilometres the phenomenon is called a hurricane that's the current status of research but it's recently been confirmed that about 90% of all hurricanes that bash the US East Coast are not born at sea after all over the hot soil of the African continent tall tropical thundercloud towers form rising way up into the atmosphere the trade winds that continuously sweep across these latitudes westwards are swirled by the cloud towers the still small tropical vortexes fuel up with energy over the warm water off the coast of West Africa once on the move the air masses continue to gather force becoming so powerful on their trip across the ocean that landfall brings widespread devastation but there is yet another great unknown in the equation clouds without clouds there can be no hurricanes but very little research has been done to date on how precisely clouds come into being in the cloud simulator at the Lightning's Institute for tropospheric research and Leipzig Germany scientists are trying to pinpoint the conditions that allow clouds to form in addition to playing a decisive role in storm systems clouds are also an important factor in climate models but because the process of cloud formation has not been well enough understood it has been under emphasized or even left out of such models aerosols a mixture of fine suspended particles solid or liquid play a significant role here I did a quiz on Jack one of the great uncertainties in current climate forecasting and in the climate models used to make such predictions is the interaction between aerosol particles and clouds one such interaction is that aerosol particles cause the clouds to freeze or influence the freezing process by our results make a contribution to moving the forecasts or the equations in the models that they closer to reality indicated posniak or impurities in the air known as cloud condensation nuclei are required to transform water into ice crystals funks creating clouds the lightness researchers are experimenting with a wide variety of particles to find out how they control the formation of clouds the Sahara is the major source of atmospheric mineral dust at the same time this desert also has the power to nip the development of cloud systems in the bud and thus prevent hurricanes then stock our scope when a heavy load of dust from the Western Sahara is conveyed towards the Atlantic Ocean it disrupts the development of a hurricane that happens to be forming there at the same time it's simply the arid air that comes with this dust wraps around the hurricane basically cutting it off from its humidity supply from their foisted before that means that dust outbreaks in the Western Sahara inhibit Huracan developed hemin tibideaux anethe hurricane only the whirl winds that make it through this package of dusty air are able to develop explosively embarking on their journey across the Atlantic so without the huge supply of dust from the our prospects would be grim for the east coast of the USA Miami is especially at risk every other year a powerful tropical storm weaves through the coastal city and every five years it's hit by a hurricane the next is now anxiously awaited but in Chester County South Carolina they're busy making their own super storms in the business and home safety research centers hurricane simulator they're preparing for a building test cameras are installed in and around the test building to document every phase of the tests when we turn the fans on and we go up to full speed it's like turning on the electricity for a town of 9,000 homes more wind is produced here than produced by the water at Niagara Falls the two test participants stand on a pivoting platform so that they can be exposed to winds from all different directions tannins help to simulate wind whip debris the hall has to be cleared just before the test starts the 105 fans can create winds of up to 200 km/h and category three hurricanes but the installation does more than just pure power data taken from real hurricanes can also be programmed in and simulated blowers that run forwards and back can generate gusts and all sorts of wind variations when the windows have been blown out and the winds press on the roof and walls from within the structural engineering is especially challenged the conventional construction style soon displays its weakness before the video images are reviewed every stone is turned and every bit of building material checked for damage lightweight construction in the United States has repeatedly led to unnecessarily severe damage which could often have been avoided with minor reinforcements we've seen this kind of damage so many times out in the field after a hurricane and to be able to put it in a controlled environment and to be able to communicate the people that for a few hundred dollars maybe three thousand dollars total difference between the two buildings for all the things we did you have one building that's you replace that one window you're back in business the other building is going to be demolished and the houses aren't only exposed to wind power hurricane companion phenomena such as rain of fire glowing embers and all sorts of foreign bodies can also be fed into the wind currents these experiments come too late for the people who lost everything when Sandy hit the hurricane left at least 142 dead in its wake 72 of them in the United States alone on the morning of October 29th over 8 million people were without electricity many for several days the total damage from Sandy has been put at fifty billion dollars considerably less economic loss was caused by the outbreak of Iceland's ayayayayay [ __ ] when volcanic ash grounded international air traffic for days on end but the eruption brought another surprise lightning shot from the ash cloud lighting up the night sky because it turns out that big ash clouds behave exactly like thunder clouds they are formed when warm humid air rises up into the atmosphere expanding as it goes and then cools down until ice particles form the warmth set free by condensation creates a strong updraft that pulls the little ice particles along with it by colliding with each other they become charged due to their greater weight here large negatively charged ice pellets are stored in the bottom part of the cloud lightning equalizes potentially hurricanes are to summer what blizzards are to winter statistically they are less deadly but are nonetheless able to bring whole regions of the country to a virtual standstill because the American continent has no major mountain ranges running from east to west cold air from the polar regions can reach far into the south warm southern air is sucked in supplying the huge amounts of humidity needed to cover the country in snow and ice February 2nd 2011 wasn't just Groundhog Day in the US an extreme blizzard was also wreaking havoc from northern Canada all the way to New Mexico millions of people were left without electricity in Europe to severe storms and floods are becoming more common interstate communications proved efficient when eastern Germany was swamped in heavy flood waters so in 2002 state and federal governments established a joint situation center since then all German disaster relief efforts both domestic and cross-border are coordinated from here in early 2007 damage limitation work began here 72 hours before Kirill struck its massive blow site plans and prognosis were compiled and communicated to relevant domestic and international authorities resources such as sand sacks tents and helicopters were brokered from here to avoid shortages at key points and new challenges will face the center in the future as the number and severity of European blizzards increases they mostly develop over the North Atlantic from where they move towards northwestern Europe where cold air meets warm air high pressure meets low pressure the forces that are then unleashed shave entire force there and submerge cities and flash flooding public infrastructure collapses geophysicist Shimano divinsky discovered that the heavy rains that the Hurricanes have in their luggage can also have very different surprising consequences extreme precipitation such as in the case of tropical storms flushes huge amounts of earth into the ocean thus changing the pressure ratios in the ground Rock long under pressure far below is suddenly relieved of this pressure and begins to stretch its legs events in 2010 in Haiti showed what dramatic consequences such a change in pressure can have the most devastating earthquake of the 21st century cost 300,000 people their lives and left over 1 million homeless one and a half years earlier gigantic hurricanes had plagued the region causing major landslides huge amounts of earth that had piled up were washed into the sea though the data from Haiti is sparse the de Linsky is certain that the storms triggered the earthquake we started the research in Haiti but there's very little data in a table so regarding earthquakes and and hurricanes so we found that the similar phenomena occurs in Taiwan and to do that to understand the relation between these two phenomena we analyzed the wet by phone data set over the past 50 years and the data set of earthquakes in Taiwan and we found that these are very significant relations in the timing of earthquake after this wet x1 in Pakistan ein typhoon morakot raged across Taiwan gigantic amounts of soil thus found their way from the mainland into the sea only a half a year later the strongest quake for more than a century rocked the southeast of the country 85% of all major quakes in Taiwan hit within four years after a typhoon with heavy rainfall five times as many as the average the same could happen in Japan the country is considered one of the most dangerous in the world and not just since Fukushima and Tokyo the world's largest city is also considered the most vulnerable 35 million people live here at extremely close quarters and the city is susceptible to all sorts of natural disasters the quake in 2011 once again reminded inhabitants that the Japanese capital is sure to have its own big one typhoons thrash the country bringing public services to a standstill these events regularly submerge whole areas and floodwaters claimed lives and caused damages in the millions but Japan wouldn't be Japan if it didn't meet the challenge with a technological solution [Music] a gigantic installation reveals itself 80 meters underground here under the project name G cans a subterranean concrete Cathedral was built to outfox deluges that would otherwise flood streets and houses in a tropical storm four rivers run through the region before they can jump their banks the water is channeled into a spiral-shaped cylinder which also decelerates the speed of its flow from here the flood waters flow into a system of ten meter high pipes into another cylinder the water masses then rise until they reach the rim of a giant Cathedral and then fill it up powered by turbines huge paddle wheels pump 200 cubic meters of water per second into the Edogawa River from where it flows on into the Pacific rapid urbanization of the water-rich region which lies below sea level meant that the water could no longer be absorbed and regularly jumped its banks where it caused major damage sri lankan specialist for water safety and climate change Shrikant ihara participated in the design of the facility now visiting Japan its objective so many different hazards you have earthquakes floods volcanoes tsunamis and so on so there from the beginning the Japanese cultures that if you give in to each of these there will not been much left so people have to live in a very limited flat matter land which is in the coastal areas and that are the urbanized areas where we get the measure of the people living in so on one hand there are multiple threats on the other hand there is not magical places to go but Herod is convinced that mega technology can no longer be the only response to natural disasters he believes Fukushima has led to new attitudes and approaches so when you have subjected something you build stronger to withstand so you keep on building your resistance against the different types of disasters so because of that culture I think it's possible to come up with these schemes and implement them because to guarantee our safety at a certain level but I think we're also changing rapidly now after the March big earthquake tsunami and the nuclear disaster at least there's no clear identification that we have treat different types of disasters differently the one which happened very frequently and which one it happen very infrequently and we can't control it impoverished countries like Bangladesh cannot even contemplate implementing such astronomically expensive technology here people have no choice but to endure the violent vagaries of nature when in 1970 a horrific cyclone raced over eastern Pakistan had swept almost 500,000 people to their deaths and went down in the annals as the worst storm disaster in recorded history 10 meter high flood waters submerged large areas of the islands in the Ganges Delta [Music] outrage over miserable sanitation and efficient 8 efforts by the then government finally resulted in the succession of Bangladesh from eastern Pakistan it remains a sovereign nation Bangladesh lies just a scant metre above sea level its rise will pose a serious threat to the country and to many other coastal regions worldwide this is a hurricane the greatest storm on earth today with the help of the weather satellite radar and reconnaissance planes we are better warned than ever before when hurricanes approach people who can prepare but that was all in the early 1960s the US government started a research project codenamed Stormfury aimed at defusing the force of hurricanes the scientists scattered silver iodide and the rain bands of the storm to dissolve the inner structure of the hurricane the target was the cloud layer just outside the actual eye wall by seeding these clouds it was thought that a new larger ring would be formed around the eye thus weakening the hurricane the experiment was conducted over the open seas far from any landmass but the results were so disappointing that project Stormfury was shut down but the weather makers didn't just throw in the towel in 2005 the Wyoming weather modification project was started in response to the extreme drought that had plagued Wyoming for several summers running the clouds here are still being seeded with silver iodide but this time in winter the silver iodide allows the ice crystals in the clouds to keep growing until they drop down the depth of snowfall shows the scientists whether or not the experiment has been a success I hear the assertion that we're playing God with the weather no we're really not what we're doing is trying to nudge whether the nudge in nature to be a little bit more efficient and to put a little bit more down on the ground where we humans can use it if it only for a short time before it's back lands and since the project began Wyoming has in fact seen about 10% more precipitation whether these little nudges really just harmlessly help to improve the weather remains to be seen over time but history has again and again shown that the systems in which we human beings interfere whether out of ignorance or irresponsibility are usually much more complex than we expect and what now seems like a blessing for the farmers could soon aggravate the situation possibly completely destabilizing the system we call weather the People's Republic of China openly manipulates the weather for parades and state occasions there is even an official weather modification office responsible for example for delivering clear skies for the October 1st national founding Day celebrations each year comes of chemicals are sprayed before hand to squeeze the clouds dry likewise nothing could be left to chance in 2008 for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games an incoming rain system was intercepted well outside the capital and the fireworks display went on to dazzle without disturbance every year the Chinese cough up the equivalent of sixty to ninety million dollars for weather modification sometimes they shoot wide over the mark in a November 2009 attempt to combat drought the authorities inadvertently triggered a snow storm that plunged entire regions of China in decay us but worse things have happened in August 1952 the British Royal Air Force carried out operation cumulus clouds were seated with dry ice only 30 minutes later those clouds dropped their wet payload but the research data was immediately classified and vanished and a secret British military archives it happens that on the same day Lindh Mithen Devon was hit by one of the worst floods in British history after extremely heavy rainfall the Exmoor river suddenly and violently burst its banks sweeping away homes bridges and businesses 34 people died in the disaster which was officially deemed an act of God thirty years later the seemingly harmless research files were finally released at the fact that they had been classified immediately following the disaster is evidence that the air force believed human interference had had a hand in it after all it's no secret that the military research labs of many nations are busy trying to weaponize weather but winds and storms are not only destructive when a sand storm rages in Chad the giant trees in the Amazon thrive about half of the global atmospheric dust comes from the Sahara the majority of it is supplied by the boodle a depression in Schad and consist mainly of dead algae from the sediment from the shrinking lake chad trade winds carry the dust over 5,000 kilometres westwards across the Atlantic about 40 million tons of it a year vast amounts of tiny fossilized algae from Africa fertilize the huge trees mainly with phosphorus and iron causing them to shoot up the Sahara is so-to-speak range in chief of the Amazon rainforest even in Hawaii phosphorus has been found that can be traced back to the Sahara [Music] but the fertilizing effect can also get out of hand iron is very rare in the world's oceans the deficiency of it limits the growth of algae and bacteria when the iron rich dust falls into the sea it can lead to the red tides that claimed the lives of numerous fish and shellfish the algae also influences storms the red sea water warms up more than the blue thus supporting the formation of hurricanes the cycle is complete for millions of years winds have shaped the face of the earth when dear ocean can eat away at cliffs and even grind down entire mountains thus landscapes and habitats continually come and go [Music] sandstone consists of layers of various degrees of hardness which allows it to be shaped by wind into fantastic rock formations like here in the Grand Canyon among the most famous are the fairy chimneys and Cappadocia in Turkey the Australian pinnacles are the remains of old dunes limestone deposits build up in the root canals of dead plants that stretch deep down into the ground the wind later exposed them German meteorologists and aleeah's fink is on his way to join a group of international researchers in the Sahara to examine the wind in action the wind whipped desert dust over the Sahara means that the weather satellite maps show the region as basically a white patch within this white patch the scientists expect to find a previously virtually unknown phenomenon huge heat blisters billowing over the desert the fit sativa by dimension Leon the heat induced low pressure system over the uninhabited Sahara is the engine driving the West African monsoon and it brings West Africa either a biblical deluge in some years or a drought is these cycles we want to understand to enable us to warm people better in future June 2012 the aircraft of the fennec project is departing from port aventura [Music] having arrived at their destination above the Sahara the researchers flying at an altitude of just 150 meters above the desert it's the only way they can get the necessary data the fake veil of sand makes satellite observation impossible but precise data is extremely important for the people of West Africa because although the summer monsoon season brings life-giving rain its exact time of arrival duration rainfall volume and interruptions cannot yet be predicted one of the biggest challenges of the trans-saharan flight is that the key area is in the middle of nowhere to facilitate an airborne campaign we have to fly for two hours before we can get to the region we want to measure which means we have to be very accurate with our planning because if we don't even fly for two hours that means for five hours we've only got one hour to make our measurements in this region so we've got to make sure that we get to exactly the right place so we have a forecasting team back in the operation center communicating with the aircraft the satellite phone systems and they're sending the latest satellite images to the aircraft so we can modify our route so we can get it right into the center of a dust storm for example blow the researchers are chasing can cover an area the size of Europe over the course of the year it migrates to West Africa bringing cold air sucked from the Atlantic to the African continent the flight altitude depends on where the dust is suspended in the air newborn sandstorms carry along huge amounts of dust after a time it begins to drop it is this transition that interests the researchers when the big particles clear off and only the tiny particles which can travel great distances remain step by step they fill the gaps in knowledge which will hopefully lead to more accurate forecasts these days a five-day forecast is as reliable as say twenty years ago one day forecast so we're trying to get as good a forecast as possible for Africa and that's important globally but from an African perspective very very important because it helps them to predict when the monsoon is going to happen in the monsoon is very important for people planting crops the global warming that keeps ramping up the weather machine makes forecasting increasingly difficult on the one hand but all the more vital at the same time because although we influence the global climate we are not in fact able to shape it to suit our needs all we can do is to try to get prepared and to react accordingly and the dust could play a decisive role because many models don't yet factor it into atmospheric temperature calculations but this dust keeps a portion of the solar radiation from reaching the earth so it is not warming as much as expected that's a regional effect but the dust blankets that fan out across the Atlantic also affect the climate in ways that still need to be further studied and better understood another great unknown in the system we call weather is lightning although it's one of the longest researched weather phenomena the laws of physics that govern it have not yet been thoroughly studied Florida Institute of Technology physicist John Dwyer is especially interested in the high-energy radiation generated by the discharge of lightning what is a great place to study lightning or a long cement law between warm water and so we get the colliding sea breezes which cause things like that we could wait for natural lightning we could wait for something like that to come overhead but that might mean waiting all summer it's much better to bring the Lightning to us and so we use things like this so this is a rocket that has a spool or Kevlar coated copper wire behind it Dwyre uses this rocket to chase after lightning from a military testing facility in Camp Blanding Florida it is shot six hundred meters into the sky during a thunderstorm copper wire attached to the ground acts as a lightning conductor near the launch ramp a photo detection device measures the radiation from the lightning high-speed camera images show for the first time that extremely strong electrical fields are formed during the milliseconds of a lightning flash the gamma rays that can be generated by the lightning represent a serious threat to air traffic if an aircraft we're absolutely in the wrong place at the wrong time right in the center of the thunderstorm when it was making one of these gamma-ray flashes it's possible that the doses could get quite large you could in principle receive almost a lifetime's worth of radiation in less than a thousandth of a second astrophysicist Gerald Fishman discovered the gamma ray radiation from lightning more or less by accident in 1994 when taking extra terrestrial gamma-ray measurements until then no one had imagined that lightning could generate nuclear radiation but lightning isn't the only danger that big storm cells bring when they start to twist and turn tornadoes leave a swath of destruction behind them tornado's do not cost the kind of widespread devastation wreaked by hurricanes but the destructive force visited on the spots where they do strike is all the more terrible the most dangerous of them occurred in tornado alley in the u.s. Midwest between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians here the cold air from Canada meets the warm air from the Gulf of Mexico in the state of Kansas ninety-five percent of the town of Greensburg was destroyed eyewitnesses described a sinister cloud that sunk down and touched the ground it appeared out of nowhere and suddenly the houses around them seemed to explode minutes later it was all over [Music] in San Francisco tornadoes are so rare that no one worries much about them the locals here have a more pressing worry namely the big one the major earthquake that is due to hit for sure sometime within the next twenty to thirty years but the city and the whole region does in fact face another threat altogether a super storm of the kind that strikes the area cyclically every few hundred years the arc storm as it's called will bestow on California a flood disaster of biblical proportions every 100 to 200 years an arch storm pulls huge volumes of warmth and humidity out of the Pacific tropics and sweeps with monstrous force over the west coast of America this causes a series of atmospheric rivers to form that can lead to weeks of heavy rainfall rivers would jump their banks streets and bridges crumble everyday life would come to a standstill researchers at the United States Geological Survey estimated seven hundred twenty five billion dollars three times as much as predicted from a devastating earthquake during the last arch storm in the winter of 1861 62 it is said to have actually rained a biblical 40 days and nights on end geological evidence indicates that that was not the worst episode some arch storms in the distant past were far more disasters it is impossible to predict when the next one of these storms will occur and as with the expected big one there is no way to prevent the next arch storm from happening all the remains for people to do is to prepare as best they can for d-day theoretically the same scenario is possible in Europe however the most Atlantic entities rivers of condensation the arc storms are also present above the eastern Atlantic and Western Europe it's certainly conceivable that in future weather conditions will arise in winter in which an arc storm causes it to rain for days and weeks on end and it could come to extreme flooding for example in the Ryan catchment area ankles could be too cold so we can't yet speak of arc storms in Germany recent heavy flooding such as that in the order nicer region shows how vulnerable the cities and thus the people here are suddenly climate change is no longer just a word and something that happens on the other side of the world with its storms and flood waters that has long since come to the streets and houses of Germany German civil defense has reacted by forming an alliance of relevant authorities to be able to react effectively to the coming challenges the plan is four key areas such as critical infrastructures energy water and food supplies to be managed in a coordinated manner across departmental and state lines Vivian Julian according to latest insights we will experience a significant increase in heat waves extreme rainfall as well as storms so our civil defense systems have to prepare for it for example we need to speed up our warning systems we will see extreme weather events limited to certain regions which means our warning system should be adapted accordingly we also need to strengthen the self-help ability of the population everyone should be able to help themselves to a certain degree because government assistance might not arrive in time tornadoes are no longer a rarity in Germany either between 20 and 60 such twisters are visited upon the country every year they appear suddenly and without warning in the middle of Germany leaving a trail of destruction in their wake such as here in Mission in Saxony on Hoth and even other previously virtually unknown weather phenomena could soon become a regular occurrence in Germany in April 2011 extreme aridity coupled with sudden gale force winds caused a sandstorm that swept across the autobahn near the north eastern coast between Rostov and gusto causing a massive vehicle pileup that killed eight and injured many more authorities have expressed concern that such incidents could become more common most reputable scientists are agreed that climate change will take a drastic toll on our lives storms will become more frequent and more ferocious with correspondingly dramatic consequences there is not a shred of doubt that global sea levels are rising calculations vary but arise in this century of between 50 and 100 centimeters is expected that will lend every storm surge even more destructive power latest estimates predicted by the Year 2070 the world's major port cities will face a four times higher risk of being hit by a flood of the century whether the storms get stronger or weaker occur more or less frequently whether we human beings exacerbate them or not it appears we will never be able to control them we have no choice but to beware and protect ourselves as best we can because storms will always be a fact of life on our planet

Channel: hazards and catastrophes

Views: 500,671

Rating: 4.6743422 out of 5

Keywords: Storms science documentary, Storms national geographic documentary, Storms national geographic science documentary, Storms full documentary, Storms full documentaries, Storms documentary, Storms earth documentary, Storms ultimate science documentary, Storms catastrophe documentary, Storms national geographic catastrophe documentary, Storms hazard documentary, Storms national geographic perfect storms documentary, Storms national geographic storm documentary, Storms, Storms Doku

Id: nnH0tt1OZZU

Length: 51min 5sec (3065 seconds)

Published: Sat May 20 2017