Tuesday 30 March 2010

Animals are Effected from Global Warming


Animals are essential to maintain the circle of life and the food chain. It is just not the animals alone, insects, reptiles, and the aquatic life are all interdependent on each other, and on the plants and humans as well.


The greenhouses gases effects on earth. It helps to keep the Earth warm, and this is the reason why life on Earth has existed, and still thrives. However, with an increase in the gases like carbon dioxide, ozone, nitrous oxide, methane and water vapor in the atmosphere, as a fallout to growing environmental pollution; industrial, domestic, and loss of vast stretches of grassland and rain forest, Earth has gotten nearly 14% hotter than what it used to be 50 years ago, with 2005 being recorded as the hottest year ever. Besides humans and plants, global warming effects on animals is a cause of concern.


Video explaining how global warming is effecting all natural things and animals

Global Warming is affecting animals and habitats





As global warming causes climate change, many great deserts like the Sahara, are no longer able to sustain their animal population.


Loss of habitat is most vividly seen in the Arctic, where global warming is melting the glaciers, pushing the polar bears into extinction. The melting glaciers have caused water levels to rise in many oceans, threatening to drown many tropical islands and forests, that teem with animal life.



The Gulf war oil spills, along with oil tanker spills, have devastated a large number of aquatic life. The pictures of dead fishes covered in oil on many beaches, is a sad reflection of the future that lies in store for them. Changes in weather patterns and coastlines affect the food patterns of most aquatic creatures.

Global warming spreads diseases


Climate change accelerates the spread of disease primarily because global warming causes extreme weather and melts glaciers and causes sea level rises. Global warming temperatures enlarge the geographic range in which disease-carrying animals, insects and microorganisms--as well as the germs and viruses they carry--can survive.


For example, mosquitoes carrying dengue fever. using dwell at elevations no higher than 3,300 feet, but because of warmer temperatures they have recently been detected at 7,200 feet in Colombia’s Andes Mountains. According to biologist, malaria-carrying mosquitoes at higher-than-usual elevations in Indonesia in just the last few years. These changes happen not because of the kinds of extreme heat we’ve experienced in recent months, but occur even with minuscule increases in average temperature.

How mosquitoes carrying dengue fever to human body


Bird flu disease is an another example that is likely to spread more quickly as the Earth warms up. But for a different reason: A United Nations study found that global warming is contributing to an increased loss of wetlands around the world. This trend is already forcing disease-carrying migrating birds, who ordinarily seek out wetlands as stopping points, to instead land on animal farms where they mingle with domestic poultry, risking the spread of the disease via animal-to-human and human-to-human contact.


All the news is not good for less developed parts of the world either. According to scientist research,they have found that more than two-thirds of waterborne disease outbreaks (such as cholera) follow major precipitation events, which are already increasing due to global warming.

Monday 29 March 2010

Melting Arctic sea ice could change global structure



Ice Melting Fast Global Warming Potential Sea Level Rise of 70 Metres

Melting Arctic sea ice could change this pattern, or stop it altogether.Recent research shows that
Arctic sea ice is melting faster than expected. As the Earth continues to warm and Arctic sea ice
melts, the influx of freshwater from the melting ice is making seawater at high latitudes less dense. In fact, data shows that the North Atlantic has become fresher over the past several decades. The less dense water will not be able to sink and circulate through the deep ocean as it does currently. This will disrupt or stop the Global Ocean Conveyor. Scientists estimate that, given the current rate of change, the Global Ocean Conveyor may slow or stop within the next few decades.


The water in the Global Ocean Conveyor circulates because of differences in water density. Seawater moves through the Atlantic as part of the Global Ocean Conveyor, the regular pattern by which seawater travels the world’s oceans. In the North Atlantic, the differences in water density are mainly caused by differences in temperature. Colder water is denser than warmer water. Water heated near the Equator travels at the surface of the ocean north into cold high latitudes where becomes cooler. As it cools, it becomes denser and sinks to the deep ocean. More warm surface water flows in to take its place, cools, sinks, and the pattern continues.


Global warming may causes the disruption to ocean circulation. It could cause cooling in Western
Europe and North America. The ocean currents carry warmth from the tropics up to these places, so they are a bit milder. If the Global Ocean Conveyor were to stop completely, the average temperature of Europe would cool 5 to 10 degrees Celsius.



This would not be the first time that the Global Ocean Conveyor was halted. There is evidence from sedimentary rocks and ice cores that it has shut down several times in the past and those shut downs have caused changes in climate. One of the most well-known, the Younger Drays Event, happened about 12,700 years ago and caused temperatures to cool about 5 C in the region.

Sunday 28 March 2010

Today's Effects of Climate Change

How much warming has happened? Approximately Over 100 years ago, worldwide people began burning more coal and oil for homes, factories, and transportation. Burning these fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. These added greenhouses gases have caused Earth to warm more quickly than it has in the past.


Scientists from around the world with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tell us that during the past 100 years, the world's surface air temperature increased an average of 0.6° Celsius (1.1°F). This may not sound like very much change, but even one degree can affect the Earth. Below are some effects of climate change that we see happening now.

Sea level becomes rising. During the 20th century, due to melting glacier ice and expansion of warmer seawater, Sea level rose about 15 cm (6 inches) . According to Models prediction that sea level may rise as much as 59 cm (23 inches) during the 21st Century, threatening coastal communities, wetlands, and coral reefs.



Arctic sea ice is melting. Melting ice may lead to changes in ocean circulation. Plus melting sea ice is speeding up warming in the Arctic.


Heavier rainfall is the main cause for flooding in many regions. Warmer temperatures is the reason to more intense rainfall events in some areas. This can cause flooding.


Sea-surface temperatures are warming. Last few decades,Warmer waters in the shallow oceans have contributed to the death of about a quarter of the world's coral reefs.Many of the coral animals died after weakened by bleaching, a process tied to warmed waters.



Ecosystems are changing. As temperatures warm, Species that are particularly vulnerable include endangered species, coral reefs, and polar animals.

Climate Change causes sea level rise


Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather over periods of time that

range from decades to millions of years.It can be a change in the average weather or a change

in the distribution of weather events around an average (for example, greater or fewer extreme

weather events). Climate change may be limited to a specific region, or may occur across the

whole Earth.



Global sea level change for much of the last century has generally been estimated using tide

gauge measurements collated over long periods of time to give a long-term average. More

recently, altimeter measurements — in combination with accurately determined satellite orbits

— have provided an improved measurement of global sea level change.


Current sea level rise has occurred at a mean rate of 1.8 mm per year for the past century, and

more recently, during the satellite era of sea level measurement, at rates estimated near 2.8 ±

0.4 to 3.1 ± 0.7 mm per year (1993-2003). Current sea level rise is due significantly to global

warming, which will increase sea level over the coming century and longer periods. Increasing

temperatures result in sea level rise by the thermal expansion of water and through the

addition of water to the oceans from the melting of continental ice sheets.At the end of the

20th century, thermal expansion and melting of land ice contributed roughly equally to sea

level rise, while thermal expansion is expected to contribute more than half the rise in the

upcoming century.



Climate change and increased atmospheric temperatures are predicted to cause a significant rise

in sea level over the next 100-200 years. Scenarios that take into account rapid melting of the

Greenland Ice Sheet and West Antarctic Ice Shelf warn of sea level rise of greater than 20 ft

(6 meters) over the next couple centuries.

This animation shows what that level of rise would (which will happen over a long period of

time) might look like over a couple seconds.


It uses very course scale global elevation data to visualize a rising sea affect and should NOT

be considered highly accurate.