Hurricane Melissa, Climate Change and Cricketing History

Welcome to Takaro Kids! In this episode, we celebrate the historic victory of the Indian Women's Cricket team as they advance to the ICC Women's World Cup finals. Then, we dive into the formation and impact of Hurricane Melissa, one of the most powerful hurricanes to hit the Caribbean. Learn about how climate change is intensifying hurricanes and the crucial role of oceans and mangroves in our ecosystem. We also discuss the upcoming COP 30 climate meeting in Brazil and its significance. Plus, stick around for our weekly quiz question and a chance to win a prize!

00:00 Introduction to Takaro Kids
00:16 Historic Win for Indian Women's Cricket Team
01:17 Understanding Hurricanes: Formation and Impact
04:02 Hurricane Melissa's Devastation in the Caribbean
06:09 Climate Change and Its Effects on Hurricanes
10:17 The Role of Oceans in Climate Regulation
11:51 Mangroves: Unsung Heroes of Carbon Absorption
13:53 COP30: Global Efforts to Combat Climate Change
17:02 Weekly Quiz and Fun Facts
20:39 Conclusion and Goodbye

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Transcript

Kiran Menon 0:00

Mics camera. Action. Welcome to Takaro Kids, a weekly podcast that helps kids of all ages understand the events that shape the world around them. And Debbie, this week we are starting with something super exciting.

Debkanya 0:16

We are going to start with good news on this episode. If you follow cricket or even if you don't it is fantastic news because the Indian women's Cricket team actually has made history They beat Australia In the ICC Women's World Cup semi-finals to make it to the finals where they will face off against South Africa Now this is a really really big deal This has never happened before

Kiran Menon 0:41

Huge.

Debkanya 0:42

watching the match yesterday It was extremely emotional!

Kiran Menon 0:45

In fact it was, what was it? It was the highest ever run chase to win a match And, they scored 341 runs while chasing Australia's 338.

Debkanya 0:58

I'm gonna actually watch the Match which is gonna come up on Sunday the finals

Kiran Menon 1:02

Make sure that you also keep tuned in the match because India Women's team vs the South African Women's team in the finals.

Debkanya 1:13

And now we are going to move on to today's topic on Takaro. We are talking about a hurricane called Melissa. Now, if you haven't heard already there's been a huge hurricane One of the biggest ever In fact they're saying to hit the Caribbean islands in modern history called Hurricane Melissa

Kiran Menon 1:35

I think it's one of the biggest anyway, forget about the Caribbean.

Debkanya 1:42

Now before we go into you know what exactly went down. What is a hurricane? Kiran you wanna explain exactly how hurricanes are made?

Kiran Menon 1:50

So basically what happens is there's oceans and, you know, majority of the earth is covered by ocean, by water, right? As these oceans start getting warmer, and this could be because of, you know, seasonal changes. This could be just general sort of warming of the ocean during summer and then it gets cooler during winter, but that's also now getting more and more exaggerated with climate change. Anyway, warm ocean water basically results in heat being generated from the ocean. Now, I don't know how many of you all are learning this in school or have learned this in the past. Hot air rises, right? So what happens is this hot or warm air rises, and so as it keeps rising, it cools down and starts forming clouds. And then the cool air, which is on top, comes down and again, gets heated by the warm ocean. So it's kind of like this loop that keeps going on and on, right? And, and warm air keeps rising, cool air keeps coming, gets warm, keeps rising, the clouds build up. What's actually interesting is because the earth is this big spinning ball. What also starts happening is all this moving air also starts spinning, and when it starts spinning, it starts creating this massive circle of cloud and wind and you know, really start speeding up the breeze and the wind around it as well. And that's how a hurricane is formed. So you can think about this loop that's being created, and as it gets created, there is a funnel that is created, which is basically what a hurricane is. And so. What's interesting is the reason I say a funnel is because in the middle of the hurricane is actually what's called the eye of the storm, and it's completely clear, it's very calm. Around it is this monstrosity of wind and chaos and rain and everything that's happening.

Debkanya 3:53

In fact you might have seen pictures that have been taken from space to see exactly what that eye of the storm looks like. So coming back to what happened in the Caribbean islands. The Caribbean islands, where are they? They are if you look at the map take out an Ulus or a globe look at the map. Find North America. Right between that place that strip of land called the Isthmus of Panama

Kiran Menon 4:14

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 4:14

north to South America There is a cluster of islands. Now what is a cluster of islands. It's an archipelago I always

Kiran Menon 4:22

It's a.

Debkanya 4:22

say that word Hmm It's a group of islands It's which is actually officially called an archipelago. Uh so that's where the Caribbean islands are. Some of the islands that you might have heard of from the Caribbean -Jamaica Haiti Cuba these are some of the bigger ones. There are 7,000 islands in this cluster. Okay That's That's a lot I never imagined that there would

Kiran Menon 4:44

It's a lot of islands!. Yeah.

Debkanya 4:46

Yeah So this hurricane actually went and affected these islands the most. Destruction that's happened specifically in Jamaica. Jamaica's known for its beautiful beaches as a holiday destination. A lots of people had to be evacuated. Lots of people got stuck uh and in in shelters. But the important thing is people knew this hurricane was coming and they were preparing for it and yeah People are reluctant to leave their homes but they managed to move quite a few people out of harm's way here.

Kiran Menon 5:13

You know, in places like Jamaica for example, it was such a impact that electricity was down for almost, uh, four fifths of the island. So four fifths of the people living in Jamaica did not have electricity for days. Still, I don't think it's kind of recovered fully. You have pictures of like resorts being torn apart by these winds. So just think about it. These are winds and wind speeds that are 200 kilometers an hour. On our Indian roads. We probably travel, you know, on a highway we probably hit 120 kilometers.

Debkanya 5:48

For

Kiran Menon 5:48

These winds. For short periods of time before there's some cow, there's a bike that comes in the way. But in this case, the hurricane was going double that speed, 200, 240 kilometers an hour. So just think about how fast that wind must be. Right. It can tear apart homes and buildings and everything.

Debkanya 6:08

And it did. And it did. Now you know I was looking this up Kiran because I was curious

Kiran Menon 6:12

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 6:12

a lot of people are saying that climate change is

Kiran Menon 6:16

Yep.

Debkanya 6:16

lot of these weather conditions to worsen and causing more devastation. So I wanted to know is there a link between hurricanes and climate change and turns out there's a mixed response to this. So on one hand you can't say that climate change is causing more hurricanes. Hurricanes have been happening forever. They will continue to happen Yeah But what climate change is doing is making hurricanes worse. They're making them stronger Like you said this the hurricane Melissa is one of the strongest ever. And why is that happening? Now this is connected to another story that we wanted to talk about which is the climate tipping point. What is a tipping point? A tipping point is you know for example if you're if you're standing and someone pushes you a little bit you'll not fall necessarily because it's just a slight nudge.

Kiran Menon 7:03

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 7:04

really pushes you hard you are going to fall over

Kiran Menon 7:07

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 7:08

That is a tipping point. For the climate scientists have called have defined different tipping points and they said this is when a big change happens that we might not be able to reverse.

Kiran Menon 7:18

Yeah.

Debkanya 7:19

That is a tipping point. A warming ocean like you said essential to creating a hurricane is also making hurricanes worse because the more warm water we have I mean we know that the climate is getting hotter which means more ice is melting which means water levels are rising. The first people to get affected Are people who live in islands and live on the coast because the water levels are going up. And the second thing that's happening is when you when it's warmer around you things expand.

Kiran Menon 7:47

Yeah.

Debkanya 7:47

I don't know if you've learned this in science yet. If you take any anything metal -If you heat it the metal will expand. Same thing happens with water Like you'll not be able to see it Uh you know if you just took a glass of water and heated it you'll probably just see it bubbling. But the ocean is so huge, so so huge 70 of the earth surface is covered by the ocean right. So when the ocean expands really makes a difference to the magnitude of that hurricane. So it is all connected. So this tipping point what scientists have talked about right now is warming the oceans. This is affecting coral life I think that is the saddest part These coral reefs that are actually absorb a lot of the carbon from the air, that are that are a buffer between us and the and the rest of the ocean. A lot of this coral is going to die off now because we've crossed this tipping point.

Kiran Menon 8:35

In fact, um, you know, my wife went diving just a month ago. Maldives. And um, what she was saying is what you will see is coral that is turning white. And when coral turns white, that basically means coral is dying, right? Because otherwise coral is, you know, beautiful colors, purples and pinks and blues and, you know, all sorts of colors. And like you said, it then becomes almost a, system which cannot recycle all of that carbon dioxide that's coming out of all of our pollution and carbon monoxide that's coming. And it's actually very interesting. Water also absorbs a lot of this and actually apparently pushes it down into the, uh, seabed and just stores it over a period of time. Right. So you are kind of, it's it's own filtration system, which we're kind of ruining now. We've reached that tipping point where it can't do much more because so much of it happening. If you think about it. Take a little bottle. Try pouring little drops of water in it very easily goes through. But if you suddenly open up a big hose of water and try filling that bottle, most of it falls out. Right. And that's basically what's happening with the oceans. It can't handle the amount of, you know, pollution that's coming into start filtering it.

Debkanya 9:57

It brings me to this other interesting point. I incidentally I just

Kiran Menon 10:01

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 10:02

to attend this very very interesting session which was organized um by the WRI which is a World Resources Institute.

Kiran Menon 10:10

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 10:10

a research body that's doing a lot of you know they're doing a lot of studies a lot of research into how to protect the planet. And they did this session on the oceans and did you know that the ocean is actually one of our biggest allies in actually tackling and fighting climate change? Ocean is

Kiran Menon 10:27

Yeah,

Debkanya 10:28

helper

Kiran Menon 10:29

exactly. It's that filtration system, right, which does it in so many different ways.

Debkanya 10:34

Exactly and and here are some stats that you know I came back with yesterday which I did not know before.

Kiran Menon 10:39

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 10:40

know that 25% of carbon dioxide emissions from human activities are absorbed by the ocean. Like you were saying Kiran. 93% of the heat that has been caused by human activities also absorbed by the ocean. The world would be a much much hotter place if we did not have so much water covering the earth.

Kiran Menon 10:56

Yeah. Yeah.

Debkanya 10:58

And the ocean also produces 50% of the world's oxygen. Which is

Kiran Menon 11:04

That's crazy. Yeah.

Debkanya 11:06

Because this is all the phyto planktons, the coral the life that's in the ocean is you know producing all this oxygen for us. So

Kiran Menon 11:13

it's not just the trees, it's actually even the water that's actually producing oxygen for us. In fact, you think about it, it's all so connected. The trees that are providing our oxygen will not, you know, be alive if there was no rain. And rain is predominantly because of water, which goes up, creates clouds. Clouds are nothing but water droplets and then comes back down as rain to, you know, irrigate the land and have your farms and trees and all of that. So, so it's such an interesting sort of cohabitation of everything together.

Debkanya 11:49

Yeah it's literally the cycle of life right. And and you know other interesting thing that I found out about Oceans was about the Mangroves that grow on the coast. So Mumbai for example has fantastic mangroves and these mangroves have been there for like thousands and thousands of years protecting our coastline from being a eroded away. It also protects us from you know big waves from coming inland.

Kiran Menon 12:12

Yep.

Debkanya 12:13

did you know that one mangrove forest can trap more carbon than the same area of rainforest? Now mangroves are not

Kiran Menon 12:21

Wow.

Debkanya 12:22

does they don't have big trees like a rainforest would. But one mangrove has the power to absorb more carbon than a rainforest of the same size.

Kiran Menon 12:30

Yeah. They're so precious. And in fact, actually my younger kid is learning all about the Sunderbans and the mangroves and everything in India, right? And you should also go and research the Sunderbans and the Mangroves. And he's so excited about the fact that mangroves play such an important role. I think it's really, really important to understand how each one of these things that we see and We don't consider actually plays such a big role in keeping us alive and keeping everything stable. So every time you think about a plant or you think about mangroves or the sunderbans or you know, the, the ocean, animal life, just think about how it's connected. It's so fascinating.

Debkanya 13:14

Yeah obviously brings us to -see hurricanes are going to happen. They are getting worse. Those are the facts of life The ocean is warming it is acidifying which means it's not turning into acid but it is the acid content Uh is a little higher than it was before the pH level to be more specific is higher than it

Kiran Menon 13:33

Yeah.

Debkanya 13:34

which is affecting life forms within the ocean. All of these things are happening but there's got to be a solution right. And we human beings are great at coming up with solutions and that's what's going on. There's a huge meeting, a very very important climate meeting that's gonna take place in Brazil next month In fact in November. It's called the COP 30. What is a COP 30? It's a 30th meeting of the United Nations Conference of the Parties. A lot of scientists a lot of academics, a lot of people who care about the climate are coming together and they're going to decide and discuss how we can stop tackle climate change. But one of the main things that is going to be discussed is how do we protect people.

Kiran Menon 14:16

Yeah.

Debkanya 14:17

That is a fact It's happening We have to stop it Yes So while we

Kiran Menon 14:21

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 14:22

on reducing pollution, on cooling the planet, all of those things we should also work on helping the people who will be most affected People who live on the coast, people who don't have access to as many resources as you know you and I do for example right. They don't have access to be able to just run away and stay somewhere else while the weather passes. While the storm passes. People who are struggling to get food because their usual sources of food are not as viable anymore. So let us come up with solutions To help these people. In fact one of the most important things that has actually come up recently is uh early warning systems. Even the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres he's basically said that we need to focus and put a lot of our funding towards creating early warning systems so

Kiran Menon 15:08

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 15:08

happened in Jamaica and Cuba people have enough time to be evacuated. They can take their belongings and move away because you can't stop the ocean from you know forming hurricanes. You can't stop that water from coming inland but you can move to a safer place So let's do that. Let's do that for the island nations

Kiran Menon 15:26

They're called the Small Island States, right? Because there are many of these small island states across the world. Think about it. It's not just the Caribbean, it's the Maldives, it's Indonesia, which has a ton of different islands as well. So all of these small island states, their biggest concern is they will be the first ones affected by all of this, because they're small islands, they don't have massive, um, ground, they don't have land. If you think about some of these islands, they're probably just one kilometer. In, in, uh, length, you can walk it from one island, one side to the other, right?

Debkanya 15:59

Yeah

Kiran Menon 16:00

So all of these small island states are really, really calling for the richer countries to help them, support them, help with the funding. They're now coming to the fact where they're saying, Hey, you know, we are not the main pollution creators, it's the bigger countries, right? But we the ones who will suffer first and the most, so there needs to be something that can be done for our people.. And so I think that's one of the key focal points for COP30..

Debkanya 16:29

But yeah what can you do? What can you and I do? We can find out more information we can do our research. We can read about it. And I think we need to have conversations about it. Let's talk

Kiran Menon 16:40

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 16:40

more Let's talk about it with our friends with our Teachers with people around us so that if there's more awareness then we can do more about it. Solutions can come from anyone right. You are never too little to come up with a brilliant idea and for all you know the more you discuss it and study it you might just find a way to make things better for the planet.

Kiran Menon 17:00

And with that. It is time for our weekly quiz question.

Debkanya 17:07

Yeah it's my favorite part of the show. This one again I always

Kiran Menon 17:12

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 17:13

much Kiran when I'm studying and researching for each episode.

Kiran Menon 17:16

Oh my God. Me too. Yeah.

Debkanya 17:18

So this week's quiz is going to be What do we call hurricanes in India? Believe it or not it is a thing. Yeah So I'm gonna give you options. Option one, Whirlpool. Option two, Typhoon. Option three, Cyclone. Option four, Twister. So pick the right answer Hurricanes are not called hurricanes in India. That much is for sure. What are they called here?

Kiran Menon 17:47

But it's the same thing, but it's just called a different name.

Debkanya 17:50

Exactly. So send us your answers to www.takarokids.com or you can send it to us on Instagram. Get an adult to help you and we will be picking a lucky winner who sends us the correct answer.

Kiran Menon 18:04

Doesn't need to be the first one. Does not need to be the one who has won before. It can be a combination of all of these. Doesn't matter. It is a lucky winner that's randomly picked every week. And in fact, we actually had last week's quiz question, which is a very interesting quiz question, and I have a small anecdote or story about it as well. The quiz question was, which is the largest painting in the Louvre? Right. And, uh, the options were The Wedding Feast At Ca na, Mona Lisa, The Raft Of Medusa, or The Coronation Of Napoleon. And the right answer, Debbie, was,

Debkanya 18:39

It was the wedding feast at Cana, Cana? How do you say it? I'm not

Kiran Menon 18:44

it's a proper noun. it's okay.

Debkanya 18:46

We'll say it however we want The Wedding Feast at Cana by Paolo Veronese. It actually features some 50 to a hundred guests People have not been able to count exactly how many people are in that painting.

Kiran Menon 18:59

Wow.

Debkanya 19:00

But it's a wedding fee So there are around a hundred people maybe in

Kiran Menon 19:03

Mm-hmm.

Debkanya 19:04

painting is roughly the length of a bus Right A regular city bus That's

Kiran Menon 19:11

That's huge.

Debkanya 19:12

Yeah And before you go into your anecdote Kiran I had one more

Kiran Menon 19:17

Yeah.

Debkanya 19:17

Did you know this painting is actually hung right opposite the Mona Lisa.

Kiran Menon 19:23

Ooh.

Debkanya 19:24

Because the Mona Lisa is tiny. Remember we told you it can fit

Kiran Menon 19:27

Yeah. Yeah.

Debkanya 19:28

coat and someone stole it like that once before. So

Kiran Menon 19:30

Yeah.

Debkanya 19:31

Lisa hangs on one side and The Wedding Feast which is massive hangs on the other side.

Kiran Menon 19:36

So interesting, and this week's winner is 10-year-old Mia from Bangalore. Woohoo.

Debkanya 19:41

Well done Mia

Kiran Menon 19:43

She sent in her answer through her mom's Instagram account, so congrats Mia, and you can do the same. In fact, this question was so interesting that I got a message from another family who basically did this as an exercise. They went into each painting, all four of the paintings. They did an analysis of what each painting size was. They found out from the internet what the size of each one was, and they did an analysis together as a family to see which one was the biggest or the largest painting. So it was super cool and they had a lot of fun doing it. Maybe this is a way to get your entire family involved and, become a part of, you know, the Takaro episode. So make sure that you go in and you figure out what hurricanes are called in India, and, stand a chance to win that gift certificate and a Takaro kids t-shirt. Until next week.

Debkanya 20:41

goodbye