Earth Care Group Blog: Climate Change Impacts: Part 2

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For me, the global water crisis is the test of our humanity. No one on this Earth should have to live without or be denied potable clean water to survive. Water is the essence of all life on Earth. It refreshes our bodies and our souls and should be revered rather than despoiled. Our overall total regard for this lifeblood of our Earth reflects a disappointing quality of human nature. This is why honing an appreciation of water, land, air, and all these precious gifts give to us in addition to understanding what we lose without them is essential in order to address not only the climate crisis, but the state of our environment globally. A world in environmental balance is a world of peace and prosperity. Perhaps one day we may evolve as a species enough on the whole to understand and put that into action on a massive scale before this home of ours is rendered totally unliveable.

3. Oceans are warming 1 degree so far

July 2009 was the hottest the world’s oceans have been in almost 130 years of record-keeping It’s most noticeable near the Arctic, where water temperatures are as much as 10 degrees above average. Breaking heat records in water is more ominous as a sign of global warming than breaking temperature marks on land. That’s because water takes longer to heat up and doesn’t cool off as easily.

The undersea storage of vast amounts of heat has serious implications for humanity’s future. Although the topmost layer of the ocean stays in balance with the atmosphere over timescales of a month or longer, the much deeper layer below the thermocline is more insulated. This means the heat it slowly absorbs from above will take a long time to work its way out.

Global warming due to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases has warmed the oceans and is leading to the destabilization methane clathrates, which are found in permafrost regions and in continental slope sediments worldwide, resulting in the release of methane gas frozen in the Ocean for thousands of years is now thawing due to warming water temps and being released, this will be unstoppable and self perpetuating. The more methane released exacerbates the greenhouse effect releasing ever more methane. Methane a gas 20 times more powerful than CO2 is being released from thawing permafrost that never freezes due to the bubbling up effect in Siberia, Alaska and northern Canada.

As oceans warm so the area covered by nutrient-poor water increases, making the oceans less friendly for algae or plankton. This reduces the amount of carbon the seas can absorb. The threshold for the almost complete failure of algae is about 500 ppm of carbon. At our present rate of growth we will reach this level in about 40 years.

CO2 at the highest levels recorded in the history of mankind at 362 parts per million and growing..Carbon dioxide is described above as having a feedback effect on global temperature, but it's role is not limited to just that. It can also be a forcing agent.

The planet's temperature is regulated by the thin upper layers where radiation does escape easily into space. Adding more greenhouse gas there will change the balance. Moreover, even a 1% change in that delicate balance would make a serious difference in the planet’s surface temperature. People do not easily grasp how sensitive the Earth's atmosphere is to biological forces — the totality of the planet's living activity — to say nothing of the of that activity affected by humanity by burning fossil fuels from the dawn of the industrial revolution to today.

The link between carbon dioxide and temperature is more than just observational. Well-established principles of physics explain why increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide raise the equilibrium temperature of the surface of the earth. The year 2008 was tenth warmest on record, exceeded by 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2001, 2007 and 1997. Few if any doubt any longer that the warming itself is occurring, given the worldwide rise in surface temperature. This warming trend is unprecedented or within normal climatic variations. CO2 is forcing the temperature; it will take some time for the temperature to catch up with the now 362 parts per million. So temperatures will continue to rise for years to come just to catch up with present levels, this does not even account for continued releases of CO2.

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2. water scarcity

Over 1 billion people already suffer from a shortage of clean water.
Humanity is facing "water bankruptcy" as a result of a crisis even greater than the financial meltdown now destabilizing the global economy, two authoritative new reports show. They add that it is already beginning to take effect, and there will be no way of bailing the earth out of water scarcity.
The Earth – a blue-green oasis in the limitless black desert of space – has a finite stock of water. There is precisely the same amount of it on the planet as there was in the age of the dinosaurs, and the world's population of more than 6.7 billion people has to share the same quantity as the 300 million global inhabitants of Roman times.

Water use has been growing far faster than the number of people. During the 20th century the world population increased fourfold, but the amount of freshwater that it used increased nine times over. Already 2.8 billion people live in areas of high water stress, the report calculates, and this will rise to 3.9 billion – more than half the expected population of the world – by 2030. By that time, water scarcity could cut world harvests by 30 per cent – equivalent to all the grain grown in the US and India – even as human numbers and appetites increase.

A perfect example is El Alto and La Paz Bolivia.If the water problems are not solved, El Alto, a poor sister city of La Paz, could perhaps be the first large urban casualty of climate change. A World Bank report concluded last year that climate change would eliminate many glaciers in the Andes within 20 years, threatening the existence of nearly 100 million people. Because of climate change droughts are becoming deeper and longer, scientists say. Flooding is more dire. Two billion people are experiencing diminishing access to clean water, while millions are dying each year from the growing incidence of water-borne diseases – which are often solvable with improved sanitation and modern infrastructure.

Meanwhile the competition for water between farmers and teeming cities is increasing. Some of the world’s greatest lakes – among them Africa’s Lake Chad – are literally drying up. And the great icy reservoirs of the Himalayas, which supply the snowmelt that recharges Asian rivers used by 750 million people, are steadily melting away. Some 60 per cent of China's 669 cities are already short of water.

Half the world's population will be affected by water shortages in just 20 years' time, with millions dying and increasing conflicts over dwindling resources.
Conflicts about water can occur at all scales. "Hydrological shocks" brought about by climate change are likely to "increase the risk of major national and international security threats".

This will create refugee unprecedented on a scale never before seen in human history with impacts worldwide.

Because of climate change droughts are becoming deeper and longer, scientists say. Flooding is more dire. Two billion people are experiencing diminishing access to clean water, while millions are dying each year from the growing incidence of water-borne diseases – which are often solvable with improved sanitation and modern infrastructure.

Climate Change Impacts Part 2: By Tommic

1. The gulf stream is slowing:
The powerful ocean current that bathes Britain and northern Europe in warm waters from the tropics has weakened dramatically in recent years, a consequence of global warming that could trigger more severe winters and cooler summers across the region, scientists warn today.
Researchers on a scientific expedition in the Atlantic Ocean measured the strength of the current between Africa and the east coast of America and found that the circulation has slowed by 30% since a previous expedition 12 years ago.

The current, which drives the Gulf Stream, delivers the equivalent of 1m power stations-worth of energy to northern Europe, propping up temperatures by 10C in some regions. The researchers found that the circulation has weakened by 6m tonnes of water a second. Previous expeditions to check the current flow in 1957, 1981 and 1992 found only minor changes in its strength, although a slowing was picked up in a further expedition in 1998.

The current is essentially a huge oceanic conveyor belt that transports heat from equatorial regions towards the Arctic circle. Warm surface water coming up from the tropics gives off heat as it moves north until eventually, it cools so much in northern waters that it sinks and circulates back to the south. There it warms again, rises and heads back north. The constant sinking in the north and rising in the south drives the conveyor.

Global warming weakens the circulation because increased meltwater from Greenland and the Arctic icesheets along with greater river run-off from Russia pour into the northern Atlantic and make it less saline which in turn makes it harder for the cooler water to sink, in effect slowing down the engine that drives the current. Thermal expansion of ocean water will double the increase from glacial melting and runoff from rivers and streams that empty in reaching the ocean.

The researchers measured the strength of the current at a latitude of 25 degrees N and found that the volume of cold, deep water returning south had dropped by 30%. At the same time, they measured a 30% increase in the amount of surface water peeling off early from the main northward current, suggesting far less was continuing up to Britain and the rest of Europe. According to climate modelers, the drop in temperature caused by a slowing of the Atlantic current will, in the long term, be swamped by a more general warming of the atmosphere.