Effects of Global Warming on the Climate in Europe - Essay Example

Europe Climate Evidence of a human influence on the recent evolution of the climate has accumulated steadily during the past two decades. The first IPCC Assessment Report (IPCC, 1990) contained little observational evidence of a detectable anthropogenic influence on climate. However six years later the IPCC working group I SAR (IPCC, 1996) concluded that the balance of evidence suggested there had been a discernible human influence on the climate of the 20th century. Considerably more evidence accumulated during the subsequent five years such that the IAR (IPCC, 2001) able to draw a much stronger conclusion, not just on the detect ability of a human influence, but on its contribution to climate change during the 20th century. The TAR (Third Assessment report) also reported on a range of evidence of qualitative consistencies between observed climatic changes and model responses to anthropogenic forcing, including global temperature rise, increasing land - ocean temperature contrast, diminishing article sea ice extent, glacial retreat and increase in precipitation at high northern latitude. The main findings of the IPCC TAR (McMichael et al., 2001) were as follows: -An increase in the frequency or intensity of heat waves will increase the risk of mortality and morbidity, principally in older age groups and among the urban poor. -Any regional increases in climate extremes (e.g., storms, floods, cyclones, droughts) associated with climate change would cause deaths and injuries, population displacement, and adverse effects on food production, freshwater availability and quality, and would increase the risks of infectious disease, particularly in low-income countries. -In some settings, the impacts of climate change may cause social disruption, economic decline, and displacement of populations. The health impacts associated with such socioeconomic dislocation and population displacement are substantial. - Changes in climate, including changes in climate variability, would affect many vector-borne infections. Populations at the margins of the current distribution of diseases might be particularly affected. -Climate change represents an additional pressure on the world's food supply system and is expected to increase yields at higher latitudes and decrease yields at lower latitudes. This would increase the number of undernourished people in the low-income world, unless there was a major redistribution of food around the world. -Assuming that current emission levels continue, air quality in many large urban areas will deteriorate. Increases in exposure to ozone and other air pollutants (e.g., particulates) could increase morbidity and mortality. Since the beginning of the 20th century the earth's climate has changed rapidly and experienced 0.7oC increase in temperature overall and 0.95oC in Europe (climate Research unit CRU, _ 2003). These changes are unusual in terms of both magnitude and rate of temperature change. The 1990's were seen as the warmest decade and temperature is expected to increase even further. There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming is the result of human activities especially the emission of green house gases (IPCC, 2001 a). Significant increase in green house gases results in the substantial increase in temperature. The main green house gas to human activities is carbon dioxide. Anthropogenic emission has increased the atmospheric concentration of CO2 from 280 PPM to 375 PPP at present. Due to increase in the concentration level of GHG, it has been estimated that global average surface temperature by 2100 will be between 1.4oC to 5.8oC more than the 1990 level. Due to unp0recedented increase in temperature the following potential future singular events may occur: " a shut down of the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic (the so called North Atlantic current). This may lead to considerable cooling in northern and western Europe- emission of large amounts of methane from natural gas hydrates in the ocean, deep lakes and polar sediments which could accelerate global warming the disintegration of the west Antarctic Ice sheet or the melting of the Greenland Ice which could lead to rise in sea level by several meters. There is mounting evidence that anthropogenic emissions of GHG are mostly responsible for the recently increases in average temperature. As cited earlier, global temperature increase in EU over the last 100 years is about 0.95C, which is higher than the global average. The warmest year in Europe was 2000; the next seven warmest years occurred in the last 14 years. There is wide variation in increasing temperatures across the continent. In line with the global trends temperatures are increasing in winter more then in summer, resulting in milder winters and decreased seasonal variations. Within Europe, the warming is estimated to be greatest over southern countries (Spain, Italy, Greece) and the north-east (e.g. Western Russia) and less along the Atlantic coastline. In southern Europe this temperature increase may have severe consequences such as increasing drought stress, more frequent forest fires, increasing heat stress and risk for human health. Precipitation includes rain, snow and hail. Changes in average precipitation can have potentially far-reaching impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity agriculture, water resources and river flows. Changes in precipitation patterns over the year can lead to more flooding in some regions or seasons and more droughts in others, more frequent land slides and soil erosion. As an average overall global land areas, annual precipitation increased by 2% between 1900 and 2000. In Europe, the increase was considerably larger (IPCC, 2001 a). The European trend shows a significant difference Annual precipitation increased over northern Europe by 10-40% in the period 1900-2000, where as Southern Europe experienced as 20% precipitation decrease (IPCC, 2001a). The seasonal precipitation pattern shows more pronounced trends across the European continent than the annual changes. In winter most Europe is likely to become wetter (1-4% per decade) with some exceptions, notably in the Balkans and Turkey. Despite this increase, the amount of snow is projected to decline due to rising temperature. In summer, Northern Europe might become wetter (up to two percent per decade) whereas southern Europe may become up to 5% drier per decade. The latter could have severe impacts on agriculture and water resources as moisture availability so often already limited, especially in summer. Temperature and precipitation extremes, such as heat waves, summer droughts or heavy rain, can have severe impacts on ecosystems and society. Impacts include extreme events like river floods as well as negative impacts on ecosystem and society. These negative effects have adverse impact on humans and can cause heavy economic losses, e.g. the droughts of 1999 caused losses more than 3 billion euro in Spain (EEA, 2004). The changes in the climate have widespread impact in Europe. The most important impacts have been observed in Southern and western part of Europe. The tendency towards milder winter in Europe in the last 10-20 years in partly caused by the stronger westerly circulation in winters, consistent with a positive phase of the North Atlantic oscillation (Hurrell, 1996). In the past decade, Europe has been affected by three remarkable weather extremes. The summer of 1995 and 2003 were extremely hot throughout most parts of Europe. In contrast, 2002 was very wet and saw extreme flooding in central Europe. About 54,000 KM2 of Europe (excluding Greenland) is covered by glaciers 68% are located on the Svalboard islands, 21% of Iceland, 6% in Scandinavia and 5% in Alps and Pyrenees. Mountain glaciers are particularly sensitive to changes in the global climate because their surface temperature is close to the freezing/melting point). Glaciers are considered as key indicators for the early detection of global greenhouse related warming trends (IPCC, 2001 a). The hot dry summer of 2003 led to a loss of 10% of the remaining glacier substance in the Alps (Haeberli, 2003). Most of the European glaciers are retreating, loosing mass and extent because of warmer summers and a lack of snowfall in the summer seasons. The ongoing retreat of glaciers will adversely affect summer tourism and regional water resources. Show cover affects liver discharge, vegetation and wildlife. Climate widely shows that in the future the European Alps and Pyreness are likely to experience milder winters and more precipitation and hotter drier summer. The simulation of the Arctic sea ice retreat in the past decades are well simulated by climate models Global warming is caused a decrease in the thickness. Sea level rise is an important aspect of climate change with reference to European floods, coastal erosion and loss of plat coastal region. In past 100 years European and global average sea level has risen by 0.10 to 0.20 meter with the central value of 0.15 meters (IPCC, 2001a). The high thermal storage capacity of ocean water and the slow reaction of ice shields appears to delay a general accelerated sea level rise at European coasts. The temperature increase of sea surface and reduce the solubility of CO2 results rising level of sea, reduced occurrences of arctic sea ice, Impact on marine ecosystems, fisheries and aquaculture etc. Regional weather patterns and circulations mainly influence the sea surface temperatures of the European seas. Deep Ocean mixing is likely to cause a limited warming of the surface of the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean Warming in the North Atlantic may be further diminished by a weak inning of the Oceanic circulations (IPCC, 2001a) Apart form all these effects of climate change. There must be widespread impact has been felt on biodiversity of the European continent as a whole. Climate change is causing harm to marine life also. It may cause more fires, pests and storm damage as well as increasing water stress, particularly in the Mediterranean area. These conditions will curtail plant growth and reduce the amount of carbon stored in the biosphere. A climate change may lengthen the growing season, the period between bud burst and leaf fall is projected to extend further, particularly in mid and northern Europe. Climatic changes affect the annual river discharge and have been projected to vary significantly across Europe, related to regional local, changes in precipitation and temperature. By 2070, river discharge is expected to decrease by up to 50% in Southern and Southern east Europe and to increase up to 50% or more in most parts of the north and north Eastern Europe. Impact of severe flood due to heavy rain has been felt also in Europe and mostly attributed to climate change. Severe flood of Austria, Czech, Germany, Hungry in 2002 affected a lot of people. So it has been evident that climate change due to human factor has been experienced world over and to mitigate the impact of these changes needs well planned collective efforts not only in Europe but world over. References: 1. IPCC: Climate Change: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Scientifi c Assessment [Houghton, J.T., G.J. Jenkins, and J.J. Ephraums (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 1990, 365 pp. 2. IPCC: Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change. Contribution of the Working Group I to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Houghton, J.T., et al. (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 1996, 572 pp. 3. IPCC: Climate Change 2001: The Scientifi c Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Houghton, J.T., et al. (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 2001, 881 pp. 4. IPCC: Climate change 2001: The scientific basis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2001a. 5. CRU): Global average temperature change 1856-2003, 2003. Accessed from the website http//www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/ on 20th April 2008. 6. EEA: Mapping the impacts of recent natural disasters and technological accidents in Europe, Environmental issues report No 35, European Environment Agency, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2004. 7. Hurrell, J.W.: 'Influence of variations in extratropical wintertime teleconnections on northern hemisphere temperature', Geophysical Research Letters, 23 (6), 1996,pp. 665-668. 8. Haeberli, W.: Spuren des Hitzesommers 2003 im Eis der Alpen, Submission to the parliament of Switzerland, 30 September 2003. 9. McMichael,A.,A. Githeko, R.Akhtar, R. Carcavallo, D.J. Gubler,A. Haines, R.S. Kovats, P.Martens, J. Patz,A. Sasaki, K. Ebi, D. Focks, L.S. Kalkstein, E. Lindgren, L.R. Lindsay and R. Sturrock: Human population health. Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, J.J. McCarthy, O.F. Canziani, N.A. Leary, D.J. Dokken and K.S. White, Eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, 453-485. Read More