Example Of Research Paper On Global Warming
Type of paper: Research Paper
Topic: Environmental Issues, World, Warming, Global Warming, Water, Climate, Ice, Sea
Pages: 10
Words: 2750
Published: 2020/12/07
Climate change was the term used frequently in research articles for over forty years before the term global warming was employed. In 1956, Gilbert N. Plass used the term climatic change in his paper, while it was only in 1975 that the term global warming was used by the author Wallace Broecker. In mass media, global warming and climate change are frequently exchangeable nowadays even though they have dissimilar scientific descriptions.
Global warming pertains to the elevation in the world’s typical exterior temperature from the time of the Industrial Revolution. It is principally attributable to the discharge of greenhouse gases from the land exploitation and burning of fossil fuels.
On the other hand, climate change is the continuing transformation of the Earth’s climate together with alterations in temperature, wind patterns and rainfall throughout a stretched time of more than a few decades or more.
Global warming’s impacts are evidently noticeable and are presently felt and happening. Recent impacts of global warming include boosts in intense weather proceedings, mounting sea level, vanishing polar ice and glaciers, spoiled coral, alterations in animal distributions, augmented action and profusion of sickness vectors.
While a straightforward connection to global warming is hard to set up for these occurrences in seclusion, the huge number of alterations communally supply obvious proof of the instantaneous and mounting jeopardy that global warming creates to the financial system, human wellbeing, and the environment upon which people, plants and animals rely.
An effort among all countries is needed to stabilize the climate to turn aside upsetting and irreparable impacts caused by global warming because greenhouse gas pollution lasts in the atmosphere for centuries .
Causes of Global Warming
Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) take in heat released from the surface of the Earth. Warming of the Earth is the result when the concentration of these gases in the atmosphere increases entrapping more amount of heat.
Human activities cause the global warming. A common example of this is the burning of fossil fuels. The industrial revolution started the burning of fossil fuels which increase the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by forty percent. Since 1970, more than half the quantity of CO2 has increased.
The worldwide standard surface temperature has amplified by around 0.8 °C or 1.4 °F since 1900. Increase in Earth’s surface temperature leads to the heating of the ocean, a climb in sea altitude, an extreme turning down in Arctic sea ice, and many other connected effects in the climate.
Global warming was more evident in the previous four decades. It was believed to be largely due to the augmented concentrations of greenhouse gases including CO2. Unremitting emanations of these greenhouse gases will promote climate change more, together with extensive rise in average surface temperature of the Earth.
The enormity and occurrence of these transformations will rely on a lot of aspects, and decelerations and accelerations in warming enduring a long time will persist to happen. Nevertheless, long-term climate change throughout numerous years will be based chiefly on the entire quantity of CO2 and other greenhouse gases released accordingly by human actions.
Experts recognize that current climate change is mainly caused by human actions from a perceptive of fundamental physics, evaluating interpretation with representations, and fingerprinting the meticulous outline of climate change due to diverse human and natural factors.
It was known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide is one of the major greenhouse gases that are significant to the energy balance of the Earth. Direct computation of the amount of CO2 in air rapt in ice as well as in the atmosphere demonstrate that atmospheric CO2 mount by approximately 40% between 1800 and 2012.
The increase in different carbon isotopes was found to be caused by human. Moreover, increase in other greenhouse gases like nitrous oxide and methane were also consequences of human activities.
There was a constant observation on the increase in global surface temperature since 1900. Diverse impacts on climate have dissimilar marks in climate information. These inimitable signs are easier to observe by inquiring outside a solitary number and searching, in its place, at the seasonal and geographical climate change patterns.
The viewed and interpreted patterns of global warming, temperature modification throughout the impression, augments in marine heat capacity, boost in atmospheric humidity, sea height ascendance, and rise melting of sea ice and land are different patterns that scientists wait for to perceive because of increasing levels of CO2 and other human made transformations.
The anticipated modifications in weather are rooted in our perceptive of the greenhouse gases method of entrapping heat. This primary perception of fingerprints and greenhouse gases demonstrate that natural causes only are insufficient to give details about the fresh recognized changes in climate.
There are also natural causes of global warming and these include interior fluctuations in the climate structure, volcanic eruptions, and disparities in the Sun’s production and in Earth’s revolution around the Sun.
There are simulations of global temperatures that compute the climate models to distinguish the results of naturally occurring causes of global warming and the human induced causes of global warming. The result of the simulation showed that the natural causes of global warming yield diminutive warming or even a minor cooling, around the 20th century while the models with human factors on the consistence of the atmosphere are the consequential temperature alterations in agreement with pragmatic alterations.
Results of Global Warming
Global warming can result to different phenomena. Global warming can increase the possibility of the occurrence of killer heat waves twice. In 2003, a killer heat waves hit Europe with the temperature being at his highest in 500 years that eventually killed 27,000 human beings.
A killer heat wave also occurred in India in 1998 that caused the death of 3,028 people; and in Chicago in 1995 that caused the death of 525 people. Heat waves were also coupled with wildfires and drought.
On the other hand, wildfires, drought and forest pests were also consequences of global warming. Between 1998 and 2002, abnormally low rainfall and elevated temperatures caused droughts jacketing broad swaths southern Europe, central and southern Asia and North America.
Drought persists in several countries throughout 2004, counting the western U.S., which suffered the cruelest drought happening in 80 years. The global drought has been associated to strangely warm waters in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean which numerous scientists suppose to be brought by global warming.
Another phenomenon that is caused by global warming is the increased occurrence of torrential rains and flooding. Global warming has amplified the strength of precipitation proceedings over latest years. Venezuela experienced its maximum monthly rainfall in 100 years in 1999. The event killed around 30,000 people. Torrential rains and flooding is coupled with immense landslides and flooding.
The rising of sea-level is one of the most definite effects of global warming. In the 20th century, worldwide sea levels went up by around 4 to 8 inches which is ten times the regular speed of rising over the previous 3,000 years.
Sea level rising is expected to persist or hasten further. It is coupled with the increasing probability of catastrophic collapse of Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets increases. One-third of the marsh at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge was by now inundated under the sea. Bermuda mangrove forests are creased with newly drowned trees. Rising of sea level is coupled with the lost of numerous square miles of land, and worsening of flooding for the duration of storm surges.
Melting permafrost and breaking up of polar ice are also effects of global warming. In 2002, Rhode Island-sized region of the Larsen B ice shelf broke up in just 35 days. The ice shelf serves as a barrier for glaciers on land. Breaking-up of polar ice causes acceleration on glacier flow which will lead to the rising of sea level.
There is shrinkage in the surface area of the Arctic’s sea ice by 10 to 15%, and thinning of ice by 40% since the 1950s. The shrinkage can soon reach the point of vanishing totally. Shrinkage is also coupled with a more challenging hunting activity for seals. Melting of permafrost can also lead to destruction of some traditional communities. The Eskimo community in Shishmaref has been so relentlessly battered by ocean waves that the whole area was required to move somewhere else.
Furthermore, global warming can lead to the disappearance of glaciers and attenuation of snowpacks. Spring snowpack has lessened by 29% in the Cascade Range and 16% in the Rocky Mountains in the previous 50 years. These diminishing of snow pack are due primarily to increasing temperatures.
Almost all mountainous regions worldwide have retreating glaciers caused by the increasing climate temperature. The decrease of glaciers is by now generating water shortages. Since 1850, two-thirds of the ice has vanished in Glacier National Park in Montana. Ice that had concealed and conserved in the European Alps which remains intact since Stone Age has melted for the first time in 5,000 years.
Effects of Global Warming to Animals
One effect of global warming to animals is the waning Arctic animal populations. The lopsided warming in the Arctic regions has had harmful impacts on numerous species in the Arctic. Species of polar bears are dilapidated because of declining ice coverage in the Hudson Bay.
The decline of the total area of Arctic sea ice by 6% from the previous 20 years caused the shortening of the sea ice season in the Hudson Bay by three weeks. Polar bears rely on sea ice with sufficient thickness for travelling and for hunting ice-residing ringed seals.
Polar bears have fewer occasions to hunt because the ice in the Bay appears later each fall and melts earlier each spring. This phenomenon made polar bears go back to land at the last part of the season in poorer health. Female polar bears have harder times giving birth when they have less gathered weight because they do not posses enough stored energy to last when they stayed in their dens for months without eating.
Inadequate spring sea ice in the can also stop the mothers from searching food for their cubs. Over the last 20 years, there is a 15% reduction in the quantity of cubs born and the standard mass of adult female bears.
Another effect of global warming is death of adult and cub polar bears due to extreme and frequent spring rainfalls. Rainfalls caused some snow dens to crumple that can kill inhabitants. Polar bears are possibly be pressed to the brink of extinction if summer sea ice vanishes transversely to the whole Arctic, as is estimated when global warming is ignored.
Other arctic species such as caribou also demonstrated population reduction due to global warming. Moreover, some Arctic fox species are also declining as the animals draw back toward the North Pole and are substituted by red foxes because they can survive in warmer conditions.
Populations of amphibians are also declining sharply due to global warming. A lot of mountain amphibians such as the 70-odd species of harlequin frogs and golden toads in South and Central America have gone or reduced noticeably.
Embryo death rates are rising for Cascades frog and western toad species, which place their eggs in lakes n the mountain. In the Pacific smaller amount of those eggs ever emerge. The associated effects of global warming such as varying rainfall patterns also affect the response of amphibians to diseases.
Amphibians naturally flee from the effects of a deadly fungal parasite of the skin that flourishes in moist areas by stretching out momentarily in warm microclimates. The global warming raises the total water vapor in the environment which leads to the production of more clouds when moist trade winds are moved upward and cooled. This increase in clouds diminishes the incidents of warm microclimates needed for eliminating fungus of amphibians .
Moreover, global warming elevated the height at which mist and clods are created; warmer air rise higher in order to cool adequately and condense. In winder dry seasons, the mountain forests are the mainly reliant on direct contact with mist and clouds for water supply.
Decline in the availability of water promotes fungal attack because amphibians are obligatory to remain in cool areas for a long time to uphold body moisture. Since 1970s, a lift in incidence of higher clouds and the lessening in the amount mist have been detected.
Mortality rate elevation is connected to the rise of El Niño occurrences in the Pacific Northwest. These El Niño occurrences results to the lowering of water levels in lake. It affects amphibians in such a way that there is no sufficient depth of water to filter sunlight exposing the eggs to UV radiation leading to more vulnerability to fungal infection .
The Weather and Global Warming
Global warming affects the average weather condition of a locality. Rise in average temperature can be projected in diverse areas. Warming is furthermost in the Northern Hemisphere high latitudes and is considerably superior in land than in sea.
It is projected that during this century, the quantity of days with a heat index higher than 100°F will increased. Heat waves are estimated to remain in a longer period since the normal worldwide temperature amplifies .
Global warming is anticipated to strengthen provincial differences in rainfall that by now subsist: wet regions are likely to get even wetter and dry regions even drier. Warmer temperatures boosts evaporation from soils, lakes, oceans and plants that also increases the total of water vapor in the environment by around 7% per 1°C warming.
More evaporation dries out lands that worsens drought in other areas. Interpretation in numerous regions worldwide demonstrates a statistically noteworthy rise in the concentration of heavy rainstorms. Models point out that this inclination will carry on as the world continues to get warmer and subtropical regions will experience a precipitation decline in general.
Alteration in rainfall will influence yearly streamflow which is generally equivalent to the total runoff water from rain or snow. Potential runoff is possible to diminish with 5-10% decrease per amount of warming. The decline is caused by augmented evaporation due to higher temperatures.
The rise in temperatures, evaporation and drought are all predicted to amplify the fire occurrences. Forests that are prone to fire are possible to become more susceptible to fire as temperatures get higher.
Simultaneously, areas conquered by grasses and shrubs can have a reduced fire occurrence because higher temperature causes shrubs to die. There is a probable loss of ecosystem due to the continual rise of temperature.
Deniers of Global Warming
Deniers of global warming oppose the idea that the Earth is getting warmer. They believed that it was only the mass media that feed us to fear from ever more panic-stricken messages human will encounter a multitude of global disasters if these will not be solved.
The deniers stated that the mass media tells people that all scientists believe in global warming and that the deniers were just swindlers or are financed by the fossil fuel corporations. Other deniers are deemed to be tobacco supporters, creationists or Holocaust deniers.
Solomon (2008) found respected scientists who oppose the anthropogenic global warming or that global warming are caused by human beings. He wrote the book, The Deniers, which is basically a collection of organized opinions regarding global warming caused by human. It provides data and graphs that demonstrate that temperature was declining for the past 1000 years until the year 1900 upon the advent of human-induced emissions.
The book and its "hockey stick" graph opposed information from Russian naval log book which stated the 1920-1940 Arctic warming. It also opposed British naval log books that stated 1730 Europe warming. However, it was not successful in demonstrating oppositions against a deep-rooted subsistence of the Medieval Warming Period (800-1300 CE) .
The Deniers demonstrated widespread deliberations by well-known scientists of features of the greenhouse effects. The details comprise radiative transport, debates of atmosphere-ocean relations, the life span of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere and ice core computation.
The deniers conclude that human induced emissions of carbon dioxide have a minute effect on the global warming. Denier researchers stated that the grapghs showed by Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth were dishonest and confusing. They supported their claims with models that support the irrelevance of carbon dioxide emissions to global warming because various world regions warm at different rates while other regions cooled .
References
Bellona Foundation. (2008). How to Combat Global Warming . CC8 Conference. Oslo, Norway: Energy and Climate Department of The Bellona Foundation.
CCIR-NYC. (2005). Climate Change Information Resource. New York: The Trustees of Columbia University.
Cicerone, R. J., & Nurse, S. P. (2014). Climate Change Evidence & Causes An overview from the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences. US-UK: National Academy of Sciences and The Royal Society.
Cook, J. (2010). The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism. Creative Commons.
Laut, P. (2009). Climate Change: The Role of Flawed Science. Daugaard, Denmark: The Technical University of Denmark.
Leiserowitz, A., Feinberg, G., Rosenthal, S., Smith, N., A., A., Roser-Renouf, C., et al. (2014). What’s In A Name? Global Warming vs. Climate Change. New Haven, CT: Yale Project on Climate Change Communication.
National Research Council. (2012). Climate Change Evidence, Impacts, and Choices. National Academy of Sciences.
Schneider, T. (2008). How We Know Global Warming is Real. Skeptic , 14 (1), 31-37.
Solomon, L. (2008). The Deniers. Richard Vigilante Books.
Wang, J., & Chameides, B. (2005). Global Warming’s Increasingly Visible Impacts. USA: Environmental Defense.
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