70 Degrees in December…What’s Going On? by Isabel Chang

Walking onto the Cary Academy campus, one is greeted with lush expanses of bright green grass, trees heavy with virescent leaves, and students commuting between buildings wearing shorts and t-shirts.

Without context, one would likely guess this particular day to be some time in late spring, perhaps even early summer. The flourishing lawn and commuting students should serve as sound evidence for this guess, right? However, not many would guess the grim reality of this picturesque setting: late winter.

These past few years have turned deciduous North Carolina, with its four pronounced seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter, into another set of four: ‘summer’, ‘volcano pit’, ‘breezy volcano pit’, and ‘not summer.’ In fact, if it were not for my careful calendar analysis and meticulously recorded temperatures, there is no guarantee that these four new seasons could have been distinguished. Rather, to save my breath, our year can simply be summed up with a single word: oven.

In fact, the IPCC 2021 climate report states, “It is virtually certain that hot extremes (including heatwaves) have become more frequent and more intense across most land regions since the 1950s, while cold extremes (including cold waves) have become less frequent and less severe” (A.3.1). Since the industrial revolution, there has been around a one-degree Celsius (two degree Fahrenheit) increase in the global average surface temperature, which is a significant increase in accumulated heat.

While the change in climate is primarily felt through changing temperatures of the seasons for some, the most severe impacts of climate change are actually occurring behind the scenes.

Between 2020 and 2021, extreme heatwaves, storms, floods, and weather patterns killed hundreds globally. The 2020 Australian bushfire season was considered a megafire due to the unprecedented size, intensity, and duration leading to the deaths of thirty-four people with around eighty percent of the population either directly or indirectly affected. Furthermore, an estimated three billion terrestrial vertebrates were impacted and many endangered species were driven to extinction.

In the Arctic, many species have gone extinct. The fracturing of sea ice is an urgent source of concern, as many species of Arctic wildlife depend heavily on sea ice for survival. Arctic seals in particular had a devastating year in 2017 when the sea ice broke up too early, drowning all underdeveloped seal pups. Polar bears depend on sea ice in order to fish their primary source of food: seals. However, with the sea ice breaking up, polar bear populations are estimated to decrease by at least fifty percent by 2050.

Without detailing the issue of widespread deforestation, the failure of trees to shed their leaves during the fall and the 200 million people at risk for floods due to climate change serve as fundamental examples of the severe impacts of climate change within the span of only a few years.

We must take action very soon in order to see the reversed effects of such devastation. You can start with small things, such as picking up litter where you see it and turning the lights off. However, bigger change can only occur through activism; you can get involved either through CA Seeds or by joining the environmental committee in Delta Service Club.

Hopefully, some day in the future, lush green days will once more only occur during the summer, and crisp cold air will blow once more during the winter.

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