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Climate Change Climate change: Climate is the long term average of a region’s weather events lumped together. Climate change represents a change in these long term weather patterns. Recent Climate History The Earth has warmed about 0.6 Celsius in the last century. In 1988 the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization put together a team of 200 top scientists to show whether as greenhouse gases increase, so does the world’s temperature. In 2001 the two groups, now
known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
had concluded that global air temperature had increased by 0.6
Celsius since 1861. |
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| "Experts
have long regarded Earth's polar regions as early indicators for
global climate change. . . . Now a more than twenty-year record
of space based measurements has been analyzed by researchers at
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Based on their findings, evidence
of a warming planet continues to grow." NASA Photo courtesy of NASA |
"This is
an animated sequence of several NASA satellites and instruments
that are dedicated to observing the Earth’s system, including
the cryosphere." NASA Photo courtesy of NASA |
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Natural Disasters
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photos
courtesy of FEMA
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Sea level rises The sea level worldwide rose between 10-25cm during the 20th century. This was confirmed by the IPCC scientists. To understand why this is happening, we need to understand the role of the polar caps & the glaciers. As temperatures rise it is expected that glaciers and polar caps will continue to melt making the sea level rise. Low-lying Pacific nations may be entirely flooded under the ocean. Coastal cites and coast-lines would not be suitable for living because of the sea level. An important role of the polar caps is also to reflect the sun light. If our polar caps keep melting, it would add more heat to our oceans and land instead of helping regulate it. Without polar caps the sun would be adding heat to the vicious circle. Due to the rising temperature of our oceans and plants and animals which aren’t heat tolerant would die. These pictures from NASA shows the changes in the polar ice cap between 1979 and 2003. |
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1979 |
2003 |
| “Arctic perennial
sea ice has been decreasing at a rate of 9% per decade. The first
image shows the minimum sea ice concentration for the year 1979,
and the second image shows the minimum sea ice concentration in
2003. The data used to create these images ... were collected bythe
Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Special Sensor Microwave
Imager (SSMI).” This paragraph is copied from the NASA website. Image courtesy of NASA |
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In a warmer world, scientists predict more people may get heat stressed, sicken or die, due to the hot days and nights. Diseases now found only in the tropics, spread by animals especially mosquitoes and other insects, will become more common in cooler areas as these animals widen their range and travel into regions too cold for them at present. Today 45 percent of people in the world live where they might get bitten by a mosquito carrying the parasite that causes malaria: that will increase to 60% if temperatures rise. Other tropical diseases that may spread similarly include dengue fever, yellow fever and encephalitis. Scientists also predict more allergies and respiratory diseases which could effect the community. |
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Copyright: University of Wisconsin-Madison,
Illlustration by SV Medaris. |
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Ecological systems
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Agriculture Global Warming may make Earth warmer in some cold places. People in these areas might have more chances of growing crops, but it might also bring droughts to other areas where we presently grow crops. Inland lakes and rivers could shrivel. Forest and Bush fires could occur more often. Frequent periods of drought could make it difficult to raise crops for food. Crops and woodlands many also be afflicted by insects and plant disease. |
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Rice field |
Rice field |
