Term Paper of Climate Change

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Writing a thesis on climate change can be a daunting and overwhelming task.

Not only is it a
complex and ever-evolving topic, but the pressure to produce a well-researched and well-written
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One of the biggest challenges of writing a thesis on climate change is the vast amount of information
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information and choose reliable and relevant sources to support your arguments.

In addition, the constantly changing nature of climate change can make it difficult to keep up with
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The Chatham House report states that the goal to keep temperature rise below two degrees will not
be met if no changes are made to levels of meat and dairy consumption worldwide. The match up of
the blue band and the black line illustrate that only the inclusion of human factors can explain the
recent warming. (Figure source: adapted from Huber and Knutti, 2012 12 ). Some of the energy
passes back into space, but much of it remains trapped in the atmosphere by the greenhouse gases,
causing our world to heat up. This research can also develop more realistic estimates of technology
penetration rates given existing barriers and assess the perceived social and environmental
consequences of technology use, some of which constitute important barriers to or justifications for
adoption. This drastic reduction in sea ice can tip the Arctic Ocean into a permanent, nearly ice-free
state in summer (Ch.2: Our Changing Climate, Key Message 11). Course will be password protected
and only available to enrolled students. The observed rate of warming over the last 50 years is about
eight times faster than the average rate of warming from a glacial maximum to a warm interglacial
period. In fact, over the last five decades, natural factors (solar forcing and volcanoes) would
actually have led to a slight cooling of Earth’s surface temperature. By the second half of the
century, however, human choices, as reflected in these scenarios, become the key determinant of
future climate change. While there is no single silver bullet that will solve all the challenges posed by
climate change, there are many options that can reduce our emissions and help prevent some of the
potentially serious impacts of climate change. He has worked the same piece of land for 12 years,
and used to harvest more than 50 bags of maize, each weighing 50 kilograms, each season. As it
reaches the Earth's surface, land, water, and biosphere absorb the sunlight's energy. Evidence for a
changing climate is not confined to the Earth’s surface. The aim of these approaches is not to
overcome or reduce uncertainty. The President’s 2011 budget seeks to restructure the NPOESS
program, but details were not available in time to inform the development of this report. By the late
1800s, scientists were aware that burning coal, oil, or natural gas produced carbon dioxide, a key
heat-trapping gas. Land Land covers 27 percent of Earth's surface, and land topography influences
weather patterns. However, creating such systems and making the information available in usable
formats to a broad range of researchers and decision makers involves a number of formidable
challenges, such as improving linkages between human and environmental data, ensuring adequate
support for data archiving and management activities, and creating improved tools for data access
and dissemination. To limit risks and maximize opportunities associated with the changes, it would
be helpful for people to understand how climate change could affect them and what they can do to
adapt, as well as what can be done to reduce future climate change by reducing global emissions.
Researchers hope to avoid a gap in the satellite record because measurements from tide gauges and
other satellite measurements would not be sufficient to accurately determine the bias between the
two time series on either side of the gap. In addition, a variety of institutional factors—such as
distributed responsibility across many different entities—complicate the development of a robust and
integrated climate observing system. Fluctuations in the pull of gravity over these major ice sheets
reflect the loss of ice over time. Moreover, sea level rise projections are, by themselves, not sufficient
to meet coastal managers’ information needs. This research should include attention to the most
effective channels and organizational structures to use for delivering information for decision
support; the ways such information can be made to fit into individual, organizational, and
institutional decision routines; the factors that determine whether potentially useful information is
actually used; and ways to overcome barriers to the use of decision-relevant information. The paper
analyzed the global climate change characteristics, and put forward that the most important reason in
recent years is human activities through many analysis. Institutions shape incentives and the flow of
information. Direct, long-term monitoring of sea level and related oceanographic properties via tide
gauges, ocean altimetry measurements from satellites, and an expanded network of in situ
measurements of temperature and salinity through the full depth of the ocean water column are
needed to quantify the rate and spatial variability of sea level change and to understand the ocean
dynamics that control global and local rates of sea level rise. In summary, the evidence that climate is
changing comes from a multitude of independent observations. That means, how many times other
scientists have mentioned them in their own published research. Change, a group of 1,300
independent scientific experts from countries all over the world under.
For example, local- and regional-scale observations are needed to verify regional models or
downscaled estimates of precipitation, and expanded ocean observations are needed to support
decadal predictions. Successful application of seasonal climate forecasting tends to follow a systems
approach where forecasts are contextualized to the decision situation and embedded within an array
of other information relevant for risk management. Tierney is a paleoclimatologist and and UA
Associate Professor of Geosciences. Bars indicate number of articles published per year. The
integration of tide gauge and satellite data provides an excellent example of how satellite and
surface-based observations are essential complements to one another within an integrated observing
system. Monkeys in Kenya have migrated from their normal habitat to a drier, more arid part of the
forest causing concern between conservationists. As described in Chapter 12, urban design presents
additional opportunities for limiting climate change. How do we know that human activities are the
primary cause of recent climate change? In all figures except the lower two in the right column, data
are plotted relative to averages over the period 1960-1999 (Figure source: updated from Kennedy et
al. 2010 2 ). These include the strength of certain forcings and feedbacks, the possibility of abrupt
changes, and the details of how climate change will play out at local and regional scales over decadal
and centennial time scales. It shows that as more carbon dioxide is released into the environment, the
global average temperature is rising and also the sea level. I. Permission of the copyright owner must
be obtained before making use of copyrighted material. In 2002, more than 120 000 people died in
India from diseases exacerbated by air pollution. There is currently little standardization of these
databases or of methods for drawing boundaries and allocating impacts. Many lines of evidence
demonstrate that human activities are primarily responsible for recent climate changes. This amount
of temperature increase would reshape human societies in ways that are almost unthinkable to us
today. In the case of GHG emissions, however, emissions apparently continue to increase with
increasing affluence (Carson. For many decades, though, they weren’t sure whether cooling (due to
reflection of sunlight from pollution) or warming (due to greenhouse gases) would dominate.
Assessments that evaluate crop response to climate-related variables should explicitly include
interactions with other resources that are also affected by climate change. For example, the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently suspended Energy Star certification for
programmable thermostats because it was unable to show that they save energy in actual use (EPA,
2009a). The consequences of global climate change are now evident because the temperature current
increases more and more every day. Weather systems, which develop in the lower atmosphere, are
driven by heat from the sun, the rotation of the Earth, and variations in the Earth's surface. Changes
in temperature over the U.S. are expected to be higher than the change in global average
temperatures (Figure 23). How reliable are the computer models of the Earth’s climate? One part of
the plan was to limit the temperature increase, but as well as goals, Prof Haines wants to see action.
This energy changes over time with measurements made in the 1980s showing that total amount of
solar energy reaching earth has decreased by 0.1%. Although this is doesn’t seem like much, if it
continued over a long period of time, it could influence the global climate. The problem of decision
making for the collective good has been extensively studied around localized resources such as
forests or fisheries (Chhatre and Agrawal, 2008; Dietz and Henry, 2008; McCay and Jentoft, 2009;
Moran and Ostrom, 2005; NRC, 2002b; Ostrom, 2007, 2010; Ostrom and Nagendra, 2006). Finally,
the gap between technological potential and what is typically accomplished might be reduced by
integrating knowledge from focused, problem-solving research on adoption of new technologies and
practices (e.g., Stern et al., 2009, in press). Understanding social and cultural changes is important for
projecting future climate change, and, in some cases, these changes may provide substantial leverage
points for reducing climate change. These and other examples of research needs for supporting
actions to limit climate change are listed in Table 4.4. The challenge of limiting climate change also
engages many of the other research themes identified in this chapter.
The Earth has experienced many large climate changes in the past. By the 1990s, scientists
increasingly used “human-caused climate change” to describe the challenge facing the planet.
Heating demand is decreasing, cooling demand is increasing. 10. Temperatures are projected to warm
from a few to over 10 degrees by the end of the 21st century, depending on future greenhouse gas
emissions. 11. The hottest days are projected to warm substantially. 12. Sea levels in the U.S. are
projected to rise 1 to 4 feet depending on future greenhouse gas emissions and the rate of climate
change 13. This amount of temperature increase would reshape human societies in ways that are
almost unthinkable to us today. Projections in 2099 for additional emissions pathways are indicated
by the bars to the right of each panel. The underlying model is simple enough to be used in real time
by policy makers to ask “what if” questions that can inform negotiations. As the troposphere warms,
Arctic ice and glaciers melt, also causing sea level to rise. Farmers of these crops have already seen
yield growth slow down since 1980 as temperatures have risen, though other policy and economic
factors have also played a role. The black line shows observed global average temperatures. Beyond
the middle of this century, global and regional temperature changes will be determined primarily by
the rate and amount of various emissions released by human activities, as well as by the response of
the Earth’s climate system to those emissions. Advertisement In an article for the Guardian, one of
the researchers, Dana Nuccitelli points out another red flag with the climate-change-denying papers:
“There is no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming,” he writes.
“Some blame global warming on the sun, others on orbital cycles of other planets, others on ocean
cycles, and so on. The UK’s rail company, Network Rail, also now imposes speed restrictions for
trains when the temperature goes above 30 degrees Celsius. Ocean acidification lowers the
availability of carbonate ions in many parts of the ocean, affecting the ability of some marine life to
produce and maintain their shells. However, for a given future scenario, the amount of future climate
change can be specified within plausible bounds, determined not only from the differences in the
“climate sensitivity” among models but also from information about climate changes in the past.
Efforts to rapidly and significantly reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases can still limit the global
temperature increase to 3.6?F (2?C) relative to the 1901-1960 time period. Differences in these
projections are principally a result of differences in the scenarios. (Data from CMIP3, CMIP5, and
NOAA NCDC). These analyses can then be used by decision makers to help decide where, how
much, and in what ways to intervene in human or environmental systems to reduce vulnerability,
enhance resilience, or improve efficient resource management (Eakin et al., 2009; Turner, 2009). This
includes average weather conditions, regular weather sequences (like winter, spring, summer, and
fall), and special weather events (like tornadoes and floods). Their yield has almost halved in recent
years as rainfall becomes less frequent. The research needs highlighted in this report are intended to
both improve fundamental understanding of and support effective decision making about climate
change. However, global climate changes are outcome of natural causes like volcanoes and human
activities like pollution. Russell is an oceanographer and climate scientist, a UA Professor in the
Department of Geosciences, and the Thomas R. But Dr Dangour accepts this would be too much to
ask of people and would result in minimal impact due to there being less uptake than more realistic
options, like the one above. A portion of the carbon dioxide emissions from human activities will
remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years and continue to affect the global carbon cycle for
thousands of years. A number of recent scientific analyses (Leiserowitz, 2007; Maibach et al., 2010;
Moser and Tribbia, 2006, 2007; Wilson, 2002; see also NRC, 2010b) have identified some of the
comprehension challenges people—including both the general public and trained professional in
some fields—face in making decisions about how to respond to climate change. Global Warming
effects mostly humans, plants, animals, and the lithosphere. In the atmosphere, sulfur dioxide from
volcanoes is converted into sulfuric acid particles that can scatter sunlight, cooling the Earth’s
surface. What are the trade-offs between the production of the foods we want to eat and the
environmental cost to the planet?”. However, peer review is only the first step in the long process of
acceptance of new ideas. In addition to assessing the feasibility, costs, and potential consequences of
different options and objectives, research is critical for developing new and improving existing
technologies, policies, goals, and strategies for reducing GHG emissions.
In addition, satellite and ocean observations indicate that most of the increased energy in the Earth’s
climate system from the increasing levels of heat-trapping gases has gone into the oceans. Finally,
there is always the possibility that there are processes and feedbacks not yet being included in future
projections. However, humans have so altered the composition of the atmosphere that the next
glaciation has now been delayed. Also with stop deforestation can reduce the raise of temperatures
that produce greenhouse gases, in additions of replanting new trees that may contra rest the result of
human activities in the environmental. Of particular concern are water resources for agriculture,
which are influenced at regional scales by competition from other uses as well as by changing
frequency and intensity of rainfall. These recordings show that the earth’s surface temperature is
increasing massively. Scientists have also considered other influences that could contaminate
temperature records. They focused on climate change and sea-level rise impacts in the coastal zone,
and examined ways of how to better manage and cope with climate change. In my opinion, and that
of world environmentalists, yes it is. Upload Read for free FAQ and support Language (EN) Sign in
Skip carousel Carousel Previous Carousel Next What is Scribd. Third, people commonly use
analogies, associations, or simplified mental models to communicate or comprehend climate change,
and these simplifications can result in significant misunderstandings. Similarly, setting and evaluating
goals and policies for limiting the magnitude of future climate change involves decision-making
processes at a variety of scales that would benefit from decision-support tools that aid in handling
uncertainty and understanding complex value trade-offs ( Theme 5 ). This topic is explored in more
detail later in the chapter, but it depends on a robust Earth system research enterprise. Arrhenius’
results were remarkably similar to those produced by the most up-to-date global climate models
today, although he did not anticipate that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide would increase as
quickly as they have. On these time scales, global temperature continues to increase. But these
changes in the distant past generally occurred much more slowly than current changes. While noting
that there is always more to learn and that the scientific process is never closed, the book shows that
hypotheses about climate change are supported by multiple lines of evidence and have stood firm in
the face of serious debate and careful evaluation of alternative explanations. Volcanoes also emit
carbon dioxide, but this amount is less than 1% annually of the emissions occurring from human
activities. It is a thin layer of mixed gases which make up the air we breathe. The amount of
information contained within the report is vast, but below are some of the key images from its
highlight document. As human-induced emissions of carbon dioxide build up in the atmosphere,
excess carbon dioxide dissolves into the oceans, where it reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid,
which makes ocean waters more acidic and corrosive. This peer review process provides quality
assurance for scientific results, ensuring that anything published in a scientific journal has been
reviewed and approved by other independent experts in the field and that the authors of the original
study have adequately responded to any criticisms or questions they received. Yes. The world has
warmed over the last 150 years, and that warming has triggered many other changes to the Earth’s
climate. As the ocean warms and ocean circulation patterns change, future changes in the ocean
carbon cycle are also uncertain. But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke
out. Improved knowledge of how individuals, groups, networks, and organizations understand
climate change and make decisions for responding to environmental changes can inform the design
and evaluation of tools that better support decision making (NRC, 2009g). In the past, climate
change was driven exclusively by natural factors: explosive volcanic eruptions that injected reflective
particles into the upper atmosphere, changes in energy from the sun, periodic variations in the Earth’s
orbit, natural cycles that transfer heat between the ocean and the atmosphere, and slowly changing
natural variations in heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. Likewise, confusing the atmospheric
lifetimes of GHGs with those of conventional air pollutants sometimes leads people to the erroneous
inference that if emissions stop, the climate change problem will rapidly go away (Bostrom and
Lashof, 2007; Morgan et al., 2001; Sterman, 2008; Sterman and Booth Sweeney, 2007). Finally,
since some abrupt changes or other climate surprises may result from complex interactions within or
among different components of coupled human-environment systems, improved understanding is
needed on multiple stresses and their potential role in future climate shifts (NRC, 2002a). He
highlights factors such as changes in temperature and freshwater availability as “having major
implications for future food production.”.
Most of these themes are integrative—they require collaboration across different fields of study,
including some fields that are not typically part of the climate change science enterprise. Recent
observational and modeling results suggest that the rate of ocean uptake of CO 2 may in fact be
declining (Khatiwala et al., 2009). Because the oceans currently absorb over 25 percent of human-
caused CO 2 emissions (see Chapter 6 ), changes in ocean CO 2 uptake could have profound climate
implications. A large number of individual, community, and organizational decisions have a
substantial effect on GHG emissions and land use change as well as on vulnerability to climate
change. This then absorbs both incoming and reflected radiation, heating the atmosphere. Continued
and improved observations, field campaigns, process studies, and experiments with smaller-domain,
high-resolution models are needed to improve scientific understanding of cloud and aerosol
processes, and improved parameterizations will be needed to incorporate this improved
understanding into global climate models. The conclusion that the world is warming, and that this is
primarily due to human activity, is based on multiple lines of evidence, from basic physics to the
patterns of change through the climate system (including the atmosphere, oceans, land, biosphere,
and cryosphere). Several of the major outlet glaciers that drain the Greenland Ice Sheet have sped up
in the past decade. Some areas of the coast and some industries and populations are more vulnerable,
and thus more likely to suffer harm, than others. The adaptation actions in these sectors have mostly
consisted of 'mainstreaming' adaptation priorities into these national sectoral policy areas. Climate
change-related changes in fire, pest, and other disturbance regimes have also not been well assessed,
especially at regional scales. Understanding social and cultural changes is important for projecting
future climate change, and, in some cases, these changes may provide substantial leverage points for
reducing climate change. To use a medical analogy, just because your doctor cannot tell you the
precise date and time that you will have a heart attack does not mean you should ignore medical
advice to reduce your risk by taking preventative measures like exercising more, losing weight, and
changing your diet. However, the climate system is complex and experimenting without complete
understanding could result in unintended and potentially dangerous side effects on our health,
ecosystems, agricultural yields, and even the climate itself. Research on how people understand
uncertain information about risks and on better ways to provide it can improve decision-support
processes and products. Annual amounts of rainfall or snowfall can increase or decrease. In addition
to the warming, the acidity of seawater is increasing as a direct result of increasing atmospheric
carbon dioxide (see FAQ Q ). Land that is not covered in ice absorbs the light from the sun making
the earth warmer. While research on these topics cannot be expected to eliminate all of the
uncertainties associated with Earth system processes (and uncertainties in future human actions will
always remain), efforts to improve projections of climate and other Earth system changes can be
expected to yield more robust and more relevant information for decision making, as well as a better
characterization of remaining uncertainties. The relative importance of these three sources of
uncertainty changes over time. It should also be emphasized that ocean altimetry, despite the
challenges of ensuring overlap and continuity, is on a much better trajectory than many other
important climate observations, as described in the text. Because of how they warm our world, these
gases are referred to as greenhouse gases. When the atmosphere, land, and ocean are divided up into
small grid cells and these equations are applied to each grid cell, the models can capture the evolving
patterns of atmospheric pressures, winds, temperatures, and precipitation. However, humans have so
altered the composition of the atmosphere that the next glaciation has now been delayed. The next
article on the agenda is “State’s land clearing concern” which highlights research found in land
clearing has a direct link to climate change. Numerous decisions about climate change, including
setting emissions targets and developing and implementing adaptation plans, rest on understanding
how the Earth system will respond to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and other climate forcings.
Benefit-cost analysis is a common method for making trade-offs across outcomes and thus linking
modeling to the decision-support systems (see Chapter 17 ). As human-induced emissions of carbon
dioxide build up in the atmosphere, excess carbon dioxide dissolves into the oceans, where it reacts
with seawater to form carbonic acid, which makes ocean waters more acidic and corrosive. In all
figures except the lower two in the right column, data are plotted relative to averages over the period
1960-1999 (Figure source: updated from Kennedy et al. 2010 2 ). Volcanic eruptions release large
amounts of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere. Emerging concerns about how best to respond to
climate change also bring to the fore questions about human interactions with the climate system:
how human activities drive climate change; how people understand, decide, and act in the climate
context; how people are affected by climate change; and how human and social systems might
respond.

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