Global Warming - Causes, Impacts, the Way Ahead - Essay Example

Global Warming - Causes, Impacts, the Way Ahead Introduction Global warming is a phenomenon of rise in the average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans since the late 19th century and its projected continuation. Since the mid-20th century, a large number of geologists, environmentalists and climate scientists around the world have gathered detailed observations and data related to various weather phenomena such as temperature, precipitation, ocean currents and storms and their long and short term impacts in terms of global warming. All such studies endorse the predictions that global warming will have devastating consequences and effects for whole earth and its life. The effects of global warming are already obvious as many of the impacts are adversely experienced by the common man these days. For instance, there have been notable variations in the climatic patterns all around the globe. In last couples of decades the incidence of climatic disasters like floods, hurricanes, landslides and droughts became more and more frequent at different parts of the world. There is widespread consensus in scientific community that driving force behind climatic changes can be attributed to 20th century humans’ activities that disturbed the natural atmospheric and the ecological balance and eventually leads to climate change and global warming. The objective of this easy is to analyses the causes and impacts of global warming. The last century industrial revolution greatly influenced global surface temperatures by raising the concentration of greenhouse gases in atmosphere and hence changing the concentrations of aerosols and ozone layer. These changes modified the land cover of earth’s surface and it changed the radiative balance governing the earth on various timescales and at varying spatial scales. Various studies show that in last 100 years the average temperature of the air near earth’s surface has risen by 1.3 Fahrenheit (Venkataramanan & Smitha, 2011). The increase in temperature results various changes in the physical system of earth. For instance, it accelerates the melting of glaciers and poles ice that raises the sea level. The raise in sea level would have devastating effects as it would submerge large number of islands like Maldives laying at very low sea level and hence hundreds of thousands of human lives would be at risk. Also rise in global temperature changes the wind pattern across the globe. It would result in colder winters in Europe and more rain in west Africa. On the other hand, there would be an acute scarcity of rain in central Africa (Venkataramanan & Smitha, 2011). Thus the impacts of global warming can be adversely observed around the entire world. The Causes There are several gases which accumulates in the atmosphere which creates a thermal reflect back effect. These gases are called greenhouse gases and the effect is called greenhouse effect. The most important causative of global warming is the accumulation of the greenhouse gas, Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. The most important source for this is fossil fuel Fig 1: Sector wise contribution of greenhouse gas emission Source (Venkataraman & Smitha, 2011) emissions. Whenever a fossil fuel is burnt in form of fuel as in the case of cars, aero plane or an industrial unit, carbon dioxide is emitted to the atmosphere and it gets accumulated. The chart below represents the sector wise contribution of greenhouse gas emissions. The natural form of reversal of this accumulation process is the vegetation which absorbs carbon dioxide as a source of energy. However, the indiscriminate human intervention with the green cover of the earth is hindering this natural process. Deforestation limits the scope of carbon emitted into the atmosphere being absorbed by plants. Thus the amount of carbon in the atmosphere keeps increasing causing the globe to be warmer. Moreover, when plants are destroyed and they decay, the carbon stored in them is released back into the atmosphere which aggregates the problem. There are natural systems which are called ‘carbon sinks’ which stores carbon for thousands of years. The chain of activities as explained above results in these carbon sinks to fail. If the carbon stored in these carbon sinks are released, it may result in detrimental effects on earth’s various systems. It has been found that oceans which are carbon sinks are failing in their capacity to store carbon (Venkataramanan & Smitha, 2011). This is resulting in ocean water to turn acidic. This would in turn mean that ocean life will largely be affected. It is the green life within the ocean that helps the ocean to store carbon (Barnett, et al. 2005). Thus this act like a chain reaction where in the ocean turns acidic and the plants in ocean die off leading to release of carbon. This ultimately turns sea more acidic. As Oceanic system fails to act as carbon sink, global warming further increases (Barnett, et al. 2005) When organic matter is decomposed under conditions where oxygen is unavailable, methane is released. Methane is a huge booster of global warming. When matter is decomposed underwater, as in the case of rice farming, large amount of methane is released. Landfills also release large amounts of methane into the air. Clatharates, which are frozen, form of methane and ice are found beneath the sea. As a result of the reciprocal impact of global warming on oceans, these frozen forms of methane get melted and are released into the water. Another alarming condition is that climate change induced changes in ocean currents may accelerate the breakdown of Clatharates resulting in rapid release of methane (Venkataramanan & Smitha, 2011). Since mid of last century, there has been a tremendous increase in the use of chemicals in all spheres of life. The use of chemicals directly or indirectly imparts its contribution to global warming. As an example, an extensive increase in use of nitrogen based chemical fertilizers in agriculture disturbs the level of nitrogen in soil which in turn induces methane release. The impacts The global warming has an adverse effect on atmosphere and earth ecosystem. The raise in earth outer atmosphere average temperature speeds up the melting of poles and glaciers ice. Consequently, the sea water level will rise that will not only devastate the vast coastal areas but it will largely ruin the ecosystem and hence marine life as well (Barnett, et al. 2005). The increase in temperature also disturbs the climate air patterns. The change in air patterns increases the frequency and impact of extreme weather conditions like hurricanes, floods, droughts and heavy rain (Venkataramanan & Smitha, 2011). In addition the climate change induced by global warming, results a change in the precipitation pattern across the world. The effect drastically declines the agricultural productivity globally. The changes in ecosystem greatly affect a large number of marine species as several habitats become unsafe and unsuitable and result the extinction of species (Root, et al. 2003). The climate changes also reduce the bacterial and viral vaccination effects diseases which were largely managed and controlled have been reported to appear back. Since human beings are in direct exposer to nature hence global warming spots strongly affect their living. The factors contributing the global warming inevitably deteriorate the quality of air, water and food. Since it is well proved fact that human activities particularly enormous emission of carbon contents to atmosphere are major contributors to global warming yet interestingly, the most human efforts to cope the climate changes are not unified and mostly unsustainable and counterproductive. For instance, air conditioners that result the emission of the most of greenhouse gases became very common in areas where there had been increase in average temperatures. Since human beings share common atmospheres hence a very stable, seamless approach is required to cope with the impacts of global warming. Global Warming-the way forward Since the increase in carbon dioxide by burning of fossil fuels, emission of greenhouse gases, deforesting, agriculture, and other human activities, are believed to be the primary sources of the global warming hence it is essential to adopt policies that will limit the emission of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases, deforestation and all such activities that which contribute the global warming. There must be awareness among public to optimize their energy use. To reduce the emission of greenhouse, buildings designs must be based on greenhouse technologies that can tap the maximum of natural energy for heating and ventilation purposes. There must be standardization in energy consuming and greenhouse gases emitting equipment’s. Forestation should be strongly encouraged and taken up as public policies. Extensive media campaigns should be lunched to create public awareness about global warming and its impacts on earth. The use of hybrid fueled vehicles must be encouraged both at personal and public transport levels to reduce the carbon dioxide in atmosphere. References Barnett, T. P. et al (2005) Penetration of human-induced warming into the world’s oceans. Science 309, 284–-287 Root, T. L. et al. (2003). Fingerprints of global warming on wild animals and plants. Nature, 421, 57–-60 Venkataramanan. M & Smitha (2011). Causes and effects of global warming. Indian Journal of Science and Technology 4 (3) Read More