Oceanography labs

Oceanography labs

Oceanography Labs

Global Warming and Rise in Sea Level

Global warming is a phenomenon of increasing the temperature average of oceans and the atmosphere, around the world for several years. The warming is expected to continue, even if emissions stop because of the large heat capacity of the oceans and the life of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Over billions of years, Earth has experienced several types of changes in climate, diverse and complex product of natural factors and some disasters (e.g., falling asteroids, volcanic activity). The main, among others, is the uncontrolled emission of greenhouse gases that are changing the atmosphere in ways that are affecting and will affect the climate of the Earth, if not mitigated issue. Prior to start the industrial revolution (around 1750, when the Scot James Watt perfected the steam engine) the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 280 parts per million (0.028%) and early twenty-first century, reaching almost 370 ppmv (0.037%) (Ahlmann 2009).

In the last century as the concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been steadily increasing due to human activity: At the beginning of the century by the burning of large masses of vegetation to expand farmland. In recent decades, the vast use of fossil fuels likes oil, coal and natural gas, for energy and industrial processes. Add to this the increasing deforestation of tropical forests in the world, especially the Amazon. This abnormal concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activity, increased the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb infrared radiation, producing a global warming more than life, as we have seen, is optimal for life and ecosystems. This began to affect the way the weather regulates the balance between incoming solar radiations and returned to Earth to space and thus the habitat conditions of living (Bengtsson 2009).

How have sources of heat-trapping pollution changed from 1750 to today? How does the simulation predict they will change by 2050? The following consequences of climate change in the absence effective solutions to the causes

1. In the last hundred years, the earth has warmed by 1.5 degrees C (the global average has been 0.6 ° C and 0.95 º C European). For the twenty-first century, the projections of climate models show a progressive trend to increasing temperatures. In the worst-case scenario, studied, during the period 2070 - 2100 could be increases of up to 7 º C in summer and 4 ° C in winter.

2. There will be a general trend of decreasing mean annual rainfall, more frequent days of extreme maximum temperatures on the peninsula, mainly in summer.

3. Is expected to further intensify the risks associated with climate extremes: floods, heat waves, fires, etc (Bickel 2009).

4. Water resources are already being affected. By the end of the century, the average global reduction of water resources could exceed 22%. Basins where the impacts are most severe are those of the Guadiana, Canary Islands, Segura, Jucar, Guadalquivir, Sur and the ...