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Global Warming

India to suffer the brunt of Global Warming, 2.45% contraction in the economy by 2048

by Editor's Desk December 26, 2019

Aditya Vaibhav | The TrickyScribe: Climate change has contrasting effects on the world’s economies creating winners and losers; with varying incentives to act. Emerging economies, oil producers and the ones located in warmer climate zones are seriously the most vulnerable. Primary cost to the developed economies in the Northern Hemisphere is likely to incur through increased frequency and severity of natural disasters.

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For them, the deterioration in productivity will be trivial. The decline, however negligible it may be, will easily be offset by stronger tourism flows supported by fluctuations in the oil prices, according to a recent analysis by Moody’s Analytics that focused on the economic impact of climate change. The research looked at four different scenarios, entailing temperature increases of 1, 1.9, 2.4 and 4.1°C up to year 2100. Global economic damage is expected to shoot up to $54 trillion in 2100 under a 1.5°C warming scenario while 2°C increase will entail a cost of $69 trillion.

 You will find more infographics at Statista

Earth’s surface temperature in 2017 was around 0.84 Celsius degrees warmer than the 20th century average. In past couple of years, global temperatures have been consistently among the hottest. The global anomaly in surface temperature is the probable cause of an increase in sea level, a decrease in Arctic Ice and the growing frequency of weather-related catastrophes including storms, floods and droughts.

ALSO READ: CHANGING CLIMATE IN HINDU KUSH HIMALAYAS

Global energy-related CO2 emissions stood at around 36.15 billion metric tons in 2017, a significant hike from the pre-Industrial times. China was the largest producer of CO2 emissions in 2017. To reduce the production of CO2, several countries started issuing tradable green certificates which is considered one of the most effective methods to encourage corporations to clamp down emissions and to encourage sustainable production. Increase in energy generation from renewable energy sources is seen as another way to cut down on CO2 emissions.

Temperature anomalies provide the difference from an average or baseline temperature. Temperature anomalies are generally more important in the study of climate change than absolute temperature because when calculating average absolute temperatures, factors like station location and elevation may have critical impacts on absolute temperatures, but be less significant in anomaly calculations.

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While positive anomalies show that the observed temperature was warmer than the baseline, a negative anomaly indicates that the observed temperature was lower than baseline. Annual temperature departure from the 20th century ever since the 1980s has consistently been positive. Land and ocean surface temperature anomaly stood at 0.82 Celsius in 2018.

Earth: A Warming Place to Live

Past years were the warmest years on record, where warming was driven largely by increased emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Climate change is evident in the warming ocean surface temperatures as well as the extent of sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere that usually attains its peak in December. Weather dynamics can affect regional temperatures and thus, the level of warming can vary around the world. Warming trends are most obvious in the Arctic region with the continued loss of sea ice.

Winners & Losers in the Direst Scenario

There are supposed to be winners and losers in the direst scenario, a 4°C temperature increase. It is estimated that India would suffer the biggest blow to its GDP in 2048 out of all of the world’s biggest economies, with a 2.45 percent contraction given its lower share of service industry employment India suffers greatly from the heat stress impact channel. China too suffers from negative heat stress but not as badly impacted as India due to benefits from tourism and agricultural activities. Canada, the UK, Germany, France and the US will see very modest increases in GDP under a worst-case scenario. It must mentioned here that the research does not factor in several climate change metrics that are also likely to affect the economy including the increasing likelihood of expensive natural disasters.

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December 26, 2019

Rising Oceans to Displace 200 Million People; Most of Them Chinese

by Editor's Desk December 18, 2019

written by Editor's Desk

Aditya Vaibhav | The TrickyScribe: Not less than 200 million people in the world will be doomed to be displaced by rising oceans by the end of this century. Flooding in low-lying coastal areas is already forcing populaces to migrate to higher grounds. The prospect of higher coastal water levels also threatens essential services including Internet access as much of the underlying communications infrastructure lies in the path of rising seas.

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Of those 200 million, an estimated 70 percent will live in just eight Asian countries. Most people affected would live in China: 43 million or around 20 percent. At 32 million and 27 million affected people, Bangladesh and India would also be hit hard, as would be Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Japan.

ALSO READ: CHANGING CLIMATE IN HINDU KUSH HIMALAYAS

An additional of 160 million will be affected by higher annual flooding due to rising ocean levels. The numbers are steeper than those published in earlier studies that used different coastal elevation models and assumed that only 250 million people in total would be affected by these adverse events. Interestingly, even this can be described as an underreported figure as the study assumed a global average temperature increase of 2° C and did not take into account the possibility of accelerated ice sheet melting.

 You will find more infographics at Statista

Mass Displacement Could Risk Refugee Crisis

Most of the populations inhabiting low-lying coastal areas face the risk of becoming climate change refugees due to rising ocean levels. Those who once lived on coastlines will face displacement and resettlement bottlenecks as they seek habitable places inland.

In the Marshall Islands, where rising sea levels are forcing a choice between relocating or building up the land, residents will need help from other nations if they decide to undertake the expensive latter option. Communities vulnerable to rising seas can only go so far in holding back the tide.

Devastating Effects on Coastal Habitats

When sea levels rise as rapidly as they have been, even a small increase can have devastating effects on coastal habitats farther inland, it can cause destructive erosion, wetland flooding, aquifer and agricultural soil contamination with salt, and lost habitat for fish, birds, and plants.

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Higher sea levels are coinciding with more dangerous hurricanes and typhoons that move more slowly and drop more rain, contributing to more powerful storm surges that can strip away everything in their path. One study found that between 1963 and 2012, almost half of all deaths from Atlantic hurricanes were caused by storm surges.

Accelerated Warming

Most predictions say the warming of the planet will continue and is likely to accelerate, causing the oceans to keep rising. This means hundreds of coastal cities face flooding. But forecasting how much and how soon seas will rise remains an area of ongoing research.

What If All The Ice Melts?

If all the ice that currently exists on Earth in glaciers and sheets melted it would raise sea level by 216 feet. That could cause entire states and even some countries to disappear under the waves, from Florida to Bangladesh. That’s not a scenario scientists think is likely, and it would probably take many centuries, but it could eventually happen if the world keeps burning fossil fuels indiscriminately.

The Way Ahead!

Many coastal cities across countries are already planning adaptation measures to cope with the long-term prospects of higher sea levels, often at considerable cost. Building seawalls, rethinking roads, and planting mangroves or other vegetation to absorb water are all being undertaken.

A $40 billion project in Jakarta aspires to protect the city with an 80-foot-high seawall. Rotterdam, the Dutch city has built barriers, drainage, and innovative architectural features such as a “water square” with temporary ponds, offers a model to other cities seeking to combat flooding and land loss.

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December 18, 2019

Climate Change

ICESat-2 to monitor Earth’s changing ice, launch scheduled on Sep 15

by Editor's Desk August 26, 2018

written by Editor's Desk

The TrickyScribe: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is all set to launch into space the most advanced laser instrument of its kind, beginning a mission to measure changes in the heights of Earth’s polar ice. Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California on September 15.

NASA’s ICESat-2 will measure the average annual elevation change of land ice covering Greenland and Antarctica to within the width of a pencil, capturing 60,000 measurements every second. “The new observational technologies of ICESat-2 will advance our knowledge of how the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica contribute to sea level rise,” said Director, Earth Science Division, Science Mission Directorate, NASA, Michael Freilich.

ICESat-2 will extend and improve upon NASA‘s 15-year record of monitoring the change in polar ice heights, which kicked off with the first ICESat mission in 2003 and continued with Operation IceBridge, an airborne research campaign that kept track of the accelerating rate of change in 2009.

Technologically superior ICESat-2

The ICESat-2 represents a major technological leap in our ability to measure changes in ice height. Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS), used in ICESat-2, measures height by timing how long it takes individual light photons to travel from the spacecraft to Earth and back.

“ATLAS required us to develop new technologies to get the measurements needed by scientists to advance the research,” said Project Manager, ICESat-2, Doug McLennan. Doug is currently stationed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “That meant, we had to engineer a satellite instrument that not only will collect incredibly precise data, but also will collect more than 250 times as many height measurements as its predecessor,” Doug said.

How it works?

The ATLAS will fire 10,000 times each second, sending hundreds of trillions of photons to the ground in six beams of green light. The roundtrip of individual laser photons from ICESat-2 to Earth’s surface and back is timed to the billionth of a second to precisely measure elevation.

With photons returning from multiple beams, ICESat-2 will get a much more detailed view of the ice surface than its predecessor, ICESat. If the two satellites were flown over a football field, in fact, ICESat would take only two measurements, one in each end zone, whereas ICESat-2 would collect 130 measurements between each end zone.

The ICESat-2 will measure ice heights along the same path in the Polar Regions four times a year as it revolves around Earth from pole to pole, providing seasonal and annual monitoring of ice elevation changes.

Tracking melting ice

Billions of tons of land ice melts and eventually flows into the oceans continuously, contributing to sea level rise worldwide. Contributions of melt from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica alone, in recent the years, have raised global sea level by more than a millimeter annually, accounting for approximately one-third of observed sea level rise. Unfortunately, the rate is increasing.

Precise readings

The ICESat-2 will help researchers reduce the range of uncertainty in forecasts of the future sea level rise and connect those changes to climate drivers. It also will make the most precise polar-wide measurements to date of sea ice freeboard, which is the height of sea ice above the adjacent sea surface.

This measurement is used to determine the thickness and volume of sea ice. Satellites routinely measure the area covered by sea ice and have observed an Arctic sea ice area decline of about 40 percent since 1980, but precise, region-wide sea ice thickness measurements will improve our understanding of the drivers of sea ice retreat and loss.

Perils of floating ice

Although floating sea ice doesn’t change sea level when it melts, its loss has different consequences. The bright Arctic ice cap reflects the Sun’s heat back into space. When that ice melts away, the dark water below absorbs that heat. This alters wind and ocean circulation patterns, potentially affecting Earth’s global weather and climate.

Measuring height of ocean, land surfaces

Beyond the poles, ICESat-2 will measure the height of ocean and land surfaces, including forests. The ATLAS is designed to measure both the tops of trees and the ground below, which – combined with existing datasets on forest extent – will help researchers estimate the amount of carbon stored in the world’s forests. Researchers also will investigate the height data collected on ocean waves, reservoir levels, and urban areas.

Benefits of precise data

Potential data users have been working with ICESat-2 scientists to connect the mission science to societal needs. ICESat-2 measurements of snow and river heights could help local governments plan for floods and droughts. Forest height maps, showing tree density and structure, could improve computer models that firefighters use to forecast wildfire behaviour. Sea ice thickness measurements could also be integrated into forecasts issued for navigation and sea ice conditions.

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August 26, 2018

Climate Change India

Planting trees for a safer tomorrow

by Staff Correspondent July 31, 2017

written by Staff Correspondent

The TrickyScribe: We are living through the sixth great extinction in the history of our planet, and the first one that is directly caused by a form of life inhabiting it.

This form of life is us, the humans!

Profit First

By putting profit first and environment last we have slowly but surely manipulated the biosphere to warm up so quickly and so significantly that by the year of 2050, 150 million people’s homes will be underwater, with hundreds of millions of others living with the persistent risk of flooding. The agricultural food output will decrease by an estimated 28%, forest fires, typhoons and droughts will rage endlessly creating more and more struggling refugees.

No Rocket Science

It does not take a genius to realize that if you put all the previous consequences of global warming in one, big, civilization calculator, you are left with disaster, with a high probability of extinction, and that is not the extinction of polar bears or koalas or rhinos, it is the extinction of us, me and you, and all of our children and their children too!

Chemistry Involved

Global warming is not caused by rubbish directly, it is caused by the combustion of greenhouse gases, of which the most prominent one is carbon dioxide, of which concentration has now surpassed the shocking borderline of 400 parts per million in the atmosphere, which basically means that now climate change is inevitable, but we can still lower the effects to some extent and depending on our efforts this extent might just prove to be enough to prevent the death of billions.

Afforestation, Credit: Google

The Way Ahead!

The solution lies with trees. Trees carry out a biological process called photosynthesis, which is the conversion of carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and glucose by the use of sunlight. If we plant enough trees and prevent enough deforestation we will be able to slow down the ever accelerating carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere and begin to reverse the process. We will not be able to re-freeze the melted ice of Greenland and both of the poles, but we will be able to prevent melting further.

The Afforestation Project

The Afforestation Project is a not-for-profit organisation established by Filip Jastrzebski with the aim of co-operating with secondary school and college students to plant indigenous Irish trees all across Ireland (starting Dublin and Wicklow) and at the same time raising awareness about the issue of global warming worldwide.

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July 31, 2017