The Earth’s Warming: Causes and Impacts
1: a) The temperatures of Texas during the 1980 summer were above 100 degrees for 69 days out of which 42 were consecutive data. Another thing that made the 1980 summer so brutal in terms of the temperature is that it had 28 days having their temperatures above 105 degrees and all the 31 days in July recording temperatures hotter than 99 degrees.
b) Measurements that were done by Climate Analysis Center of National Weather Services determined that most of the heating of the surface in the 1990s occurred in 1994 after February that saw the global temperatures recorded highest between March through December (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2015).
c) The year 2005 has been on the track to have been the hottest year on record which has been illustrative of the continued trend of a rise in the global temperatures for the last 25 years. The global average temperature that has broken record was calculated by the climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies which was way above the record that was attained in 1998 by about one tenth of a degree Fahrenheit based on the readings that were taken from over 7200 weather stations spread across the world.
2: a) The green line represents time varying velocity and the mean temperature
b) The ice shelves are the main edge of glaciers which find their way into the bays and fjords from the interior of the continent. The friction between the sides of the bay or with the features that are raised on the floor of the sea change the buoyant ice shelves to form brakes that lower the speed at which the pup stream of glacial use movers into the sea. The warmer waters that have driven onto the continental shift lead to melting of the shelves below (Collins et al. 2013). This melting induced by water results into the retreat of the grounding line which leads to breakage or calving of the ice shelves to form icebergs. The melted ice increases the volume of water in the oceans and may result into flooding.
3: a) 12 meters of ice
b) The friction between the sides of the bay or with the features that are raised on the floor of the sea change the buoyant ice shelves to form brakes that lower the speed at which the upstream of glacial ice movers into the sea. The warmer water that has driven into the continental shift leads to melting of the shelves below (Collins et al. 2013), which is induced by water results into the retreat of the grounding line which leads to breakage or calving of the ice shelves to form icebergs. The melted ice increases the volume of water in the oceans and may result into flooding.
c) The water flows to the oceans where it causes an increase in the water levels of the ocean leading to flooding.
4: The Blue Marble was the famous name for one of the most widely publicized photos of the Earth which covered the south polar ice cap and extended from the Mediterranean Sea to the Antarctica was taken by the crew of the final Apollo mission while making its ways to the moon. The photograph revealed the Earth as being a planet home to numerous creatures as well as a beautiful orbit that could fit into the universe pocket (Hansen & Sato 2012).
Understanding the Implications of Climate Change
5: Actual growth in 2010 is 50 GW and 350 GW in 2015.
6: $76 per watt in 1976
$ 0.57 per watt in 2015
7: India is the fourth largest energy consumer in the world with the energy needs ever on the increase which risks hitting a slag due to inadequate infrastructure. Among the challenges with India energy includes:
Having coal production as key part of the energy mix-India is home to huge reserves of coal in which it produced to the tune of 557 million tonnes between 2012 and 2013 which was mainly consumed by the power industry. Coal production has been on the increase since nationalization of the industry in the 1970s and such a trend is anticipated to continue in which the country aims at producing 795 million tonnes 2016-17 (Melillo et al. 2014). Coal thus remains a staple energy in India and is anticipated to remain so for a longer time to come. Other challenges include:
- Being the fourth largest petroleum and oil consumer
- Over reliance on imports
- Shortages of electricity
8: The Earth’s atmosphere is approximately 300 miles or equivalent to 480 kilometers thick most of which is within 10 miles or 16 km the surface.
9: The Karachi (Pakistan) heat wave was 49?C (120?F) and claimed about 65 lives over three days. The heat coincided with the beginning of Ramadan with the deaths being attributed to heatstroke in which the human body suffered overheating as a results of being exposed to high temperatures for a long time.
10- The fate of the extra energy that is trapped by the greenhouse gas emissions owing to human activities have remained an under-acknowledged fact in climate change. Approximately 90% of the excess heat which is about 0.75 watt/m2 that is caught by the greenhouse gases is stored in the oceans and the remaining going into melting glacier, melting sea ice and ice caps as well as warming up the land mass of the continent (Collins et al. 2013). This translates to approximately about 0.675 watt/m2 of excess energy or heat is released into the environment.
11: Research established that the oceans of the world warmed by about 0.5?C between 1970 and 2005 (Change 2016). Owing to the fact that hurricanes depend on warm water so as to release heat into the upper atmosphere as well as bring about spiralling winds, any excess energy may lead to increased intensity. Warmer waters therefore results into more energetic storms that lead to an increase in the hurricanes.
12: 384 million living above 2m sea level
13: 50 inches of rainfall
14: Britain
15: a) 175 Parties (174 states and the European Union) signed the Paris Climate Agreement when it was open for signature
b) Syria and Nicagua are the two countries which did not sign the Paris Climate Agreement
c) The United States of America is poised to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement
16: The amount of power from the sun which hits the Earth in a single hour is much more than what is needed by the whole world in one year. Mathematically, 430 quintillion joules, in other words 430 with 18 zeros after it of solar energy hit the surface of the Earth in one hour (Masson et al. 2013). The total amount of energy consumed by all the humans in the entire world is 410 quintillion joules hence the production from the sun a single hour is much more than the whole world entire consumption in a year.
References
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2015). Climate change 2014: mitigation of climate change (Vol. 3). Cambridge University Press
Change, C. (2016). Climate change
Seinfeld, J. H., & Pandis, S. N. (2016). Atmospheric chemistry and physics: from air pollution to climate change. John Wiley & Sons
Collins, M., Knutti, R., Arblaster, J., Dufresne, J. L., Fichefet, T., Friedlingstein, P., … & Shongwe, M. (2013). Long-term climate change: projections, commitments and irreversibility
Hansen, J. E., & Sato, M. (2012). Paleoclimate implications for human-made climate change. In Climate change (pp. 21-47). Springer, Vienna
Melillo, J. M., Richmond, T. T., & Yohe, G. (2014). Climate change impacts in the United States. Third National Climate Assessment, 52
Masson-Delmotte, V., Schulz, M., Abe-Ouchi, A., Beer, J., Ganopolski, A., González Rouco, J. F., … & Osborn, T. (2013). Information from paleoclimate archives. Climate change, 383464, 2013
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