Global Climate Change

We are living in midst of constantly changing climatic conditions, largely a result of human interference, and if allowed to continue can cause irreparable damage to flora, fauna and human life. The rise in the average temperature near the earth’s surface, by the use of fossil fuels such as coal, industrial and agricultural processes is scientifically termed as global warming. Warming tends to change climatic patterns across the globe resulting in the notorious problem of global climate change. Global Climate Change as the term suggests is a global issue and is not restricted to the activities of particular individual, community, zone, region, state or country.

Source: Stern Review 2006.

Human Influence on Atmosphere

An activity such as fossil fuel burning, industrial processes etc. taking place anywhere in the world will have a collective influence on every individual despite the geographical boundaries, though the weight-age of these effects may differ according to the climatic zones. The Poles and the temperate zones are likely to have maximum impacts of the rising temperatures as compared to the tropical and equatorial zones. Global warming can lead to changes such as sea level rise, changes in the amount and pattern of precipitation resulting in floods and droughts, extreme weather events, changes in the agricultural yields, and increase in the ranges of disease vectors.

Human activities such as fossil fuel combustion, industrial processes, waste disposal and treatment, agricultural byproducts, land use and biomass burning, residential and commercial sources etc all contribute towards global climate change. Man-made emissions are adding to the amount of carbon dioxide already being released naturally. These emissions have been leading to the buildup of harmful gases known as greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexaflouride, HFC’s and PFC. Of these gases, carbon dioxide has the maximum concentration in the atmosphere and hence the maximum potential to trap the infra-red radiations which results in the rise of earth’s temperature.

As a result of this warming, the global average air temperature near the earth’s surface has already risen by 1ºC during the past century. In future, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the primary authority on climate change, has projected that the temperatures will increase by 1.1ºC to 6.0ºC by 2100. The IPCC estimates that as a result of increasing human-induced emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other "greenhouse gases", average temperatures may climb by about 0.3 degrees centigrade per decade over the next century, while sea levels could rise by at least 2-4 centimetres per decade.

Change in Global Temperature

Source: Stern Review 2006