Cape Town Drought Essay

I. A world starving by not only food, but also water is something hard to imagine. A world with the likes of that could absolutely be a problem if measures aren’t taken to Midwest due to a drought. However, it isn’t just the United States that receives much drought, but many other countries as well. These countries with lots of drought often have deadly dry seasons and short rainy seasons. Most of the countries affected by drought are African countries or places near the equator that receive a lot of direct sunlight. Droughts being hard to define, often vary in many factors. A drought could last a few days, or even a few centuries. An example of this could be a drought in Europe lasting just a few weeks and not being very severe, but a drought

Cape Town is a town in Africa that heavily relies on tourism, almost 2 million people head to cape town each year.

1. The tourism in just Cape Town counts for around 9% of South Africa’s yearly profits.

2. Adding to these tourists, Cape Town’s population has nearly doubled in the last 20 years.

3. A drought here could severely affect South Africa’s economy.

B. Cape Town was struck by a drought, and has around 70 days of water left in its water reservoir, which happens to be a dam.

1. Water from wells and other sources are beginning to be rationed out to save reservoir water.

2. When the water reservoir runs out it will cause mass panic to citizens and tourists.

IV. Droughts are complicated and have many factors that cause them, which include weather patterns, climate patterns, global warming, and much more.

A. Many droughts can occur when normal patterns of weather are disrupted, which could lead to changes in the water cycle, possibly leading to drought.

1. When patterns change in atmospheric circulation, many things are delayed, such as storms or precipitation amounts, which can cause droughts.

2. Patterns in wind can also effect moisture levels in a

Drought can be caused not only by natural means, but also sometimes by human means on a smaller scale. Many droughts in Africa such as the Cape Town drought had people drink out the water reserves, but there are more ways than just drinking to cause a drought by human means.

1. Over irrigation can be another human cause of droughts, as in many parts of the United State’s great plains, people are almost through using up a huge aquifer used for farming.

2. Water pollution can many times make water undrinkable, such as places with muddy water, lead water, or even radioactive water.

V. Global warming is an event happening in every place in the world. In simplest terms, global warming is the warming of the Earth due to patterns in Earth’s climate, and also due to the release of greenhouse gases humans produce. Global warming plays a large part in the cause of drought.

A. Global warming causes many deadly effects that people often ignore, as they don’t believe the reason of effects is global warming, but global warming truly causes many problems.

1. Global warming is causing rising seas which dramatically effect all sorts of different things.

2. Global warming is causing many fires due to the dryer than normal conditions that are being