Climate Change

        So for my blog assignment this week in Dr. Huff’s class I am going to come up with some conclusions about climate change. 

Photo Credit: www.phlorum.com

Climate change refers to any significant change in measures of climate, such as temperature, precipitation, or wind, lasting for an extended period like for decades or longer. Climate change may result from natural factors, such as changes in the sun's intensity or slow changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun. It may result from natural processes within the climate system. An example would be changes in ocean circulation. The of course human activities that change the atmosphere's composition, like through burning fossil fuels, and the land surface, like deforestation, reforestation, urbanization, desertification, etc.

Climate change is a real and urgent challenge that is already affecting people and the environment worldwide. Significant changes are occurring on Earth, including increasing air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising sea levels. 





The evidence of climate change extends well beyond increase global surface temperatures. It also includes:


• Changing precipitation patterns.
• Melting ice in the Arctic.
• Melting glaciers around the world.
• Increasing ocean temperatures.
• Rising sea level around the world.
• Acidification of the oceans due to elevated carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
• Responses by plants and animals, such as shifting ranges.

At the current rate, the Earth’s global average temperature is projected to rise from 3 to 7°F by 2100, and it will get even warmer after that. As the climate continues to warm, more changes are expected to occur, and many effects will become more pronounced over time. For example, heat waves are expected to become more common, severe, and longer lasting. Some storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent, increasing the chances of flooding and damage in coastal communities. Climate change will affect different regions, ecosystems, and sectors of the economy in many ways, depending not only on the sensitivity of those systems to climate change, but also on their ability to adapt to risks and changing conditions. Throughout history, societies and ecosystems alike have shown remarkable capacity to respond to risks and adapt to different climates and environmental changes. Today, effects of climate change have already been observed, and the rate of warming has increased in recent decades. For this reason, human-caused climate change represents a serious challenge—one that could require new approaches and ways of thinking to ensure the continued health, welfare, and productivity of society and the natural environment.

Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement, signed by 163 countries, that was appended to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1997. The protocol opened for signature in 1997 and entered into force—that is, became law for those countries that had both signed and ratified it—in 2005. The purpose of the protocol is to control the production of six greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide, that are released by agriculture and industry and that many believe are changing the climate of the Earth.

In 1988, the United Nations created the International Panel on Climate Change to study the question of whether the world's weather was becoming warmer or cooler. The first report of the panel was issued in 1990. It affirmed that the Earth was probably warming as a result of human activity. In 1992, the greatest number of national leaders to attend any gathering up to that time met in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the Earth Summit. This group created the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, also known as the Rio Convention. The Rio Convention called for the stabilization of greenhouse-gas emissions by 2000. The United States was among the countries that ratified the Rio Convention.

Starting in 1995, the signatories of the Rio Convention held a meeting called the Conference of Parties every year. The third Conference of Parties was held in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. Here the Kyoto Protocol to the Rio Convention was negotiated. The Kyoto Protocol called for a more aggressive approach to the reduction of greenhouse gases than the 1990 convention. Specifically, it sought a global reduction of greenhouse-gas emission of five percent from 1990 levels by 2008–2012. Individual country targets varied; Germany agreed to a twenty-five percent cut, the United Kingdom to a fifteen percent cut, and the United States to a seven percent cut. The United States signed the Kyoto Protocol but has neither ratified nor officially withdrawn from it.

Global Warming a Chilling Perspective

Based on the analysis of entrapped air from ice cores extracted from permanent glaciers from various regions around the globe, it has been demonstrated that global warming began 18,000 years ago, accompanied by a steady rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Humans are quite likely the cause of a large portion of the 80 ppm rise in CO2 since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and from a distance, it looks possible that increasing CO2 may cause atmospheric temperatures rise. However, on closer examination it is seen that CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes-- confirming that CO2 is not the primary driver of the temperature changes.

The real signature of greenhouse warming is not surface temperature but temperature in the middle of the troposphere, about 5 kilometers up. If global warming is occurring from an increasing greenhouse effect due to CO2 additions by humans the temperature of the middle troposphere should be warming faster than Earth's surface. However, the opposite has been happening-- which suggests either the surface temperature records are in error or natural factors, such as changes in solar activity, may be responsible for the slight rise in surface temperatures (approximately 0.6° C, globally) that appears to have occurred over the past century.

Interestingly, from 1999 to the present the temperature of the mid troposphere has actually decreased slightly and surface temperatures have ceased warming -- even as CO2 concentrations have continued to increase. This should not be happening if CO2 increases to the atmosphere are the primary driver of global warming.