Effects of global warming on the weather(climate) in Europe Essay

Effects of global warming on the weather(climate) in Europe - Essay Example The TAR (Third Assessment report) also reported on a range of evidence of qualitative consistencies between observed climatic changes and model responses to anthropogenic forcing, including global temperature rise, increasing land - ocean temperature contrast, diminishing article sea ice extent, glacial retreat and increase in precipitation at high northern latitude. The main findings of the IPCC TAR (McMichael et al., 2001) were as follows: -Any regional increases in climate extremes (e.g., storms, floods, cyclones, droughts) associated with climate change would cause deaths and injuries, population displacement, and adverse effects on food production, freshwater availability and quality, and would increase the risks of infectious disease, particularly in low-income countries. -In some settings, the impacts of climate change may cause social disruption, economic decline, and displacement of populations. The health impacts associated with such socioeconomic dislocation and population displacement are substantial. - Changes in climate, including changes in climate variability, would affect many vector-borne infections. Populations at the margins of the current distribution of diseases might be particularly affected. -Climate change represents an additional... This would increase the number of undernourished people in the low-income world, unless there was a major redistribution of food around the world. -Assuming that current emission levels continue, air quality in many large urban areas will deteriorate. Increases in exposure to ozone and other air pollutants (e.g., particulates) could increase morbidity and mortality. Since the beginning of the 20th century the earth's climate has changed rapidly and experienced 0.7oC increase in temperature overall and 0.95oC in Europe (climate Research unit CRU, _ 2003). These changes are unusual in terms of both magnitude and rate of temperature change. The 1990's were seen as the warmest decade and temperature is expected to increase even further. There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming is the result of human activities especially the emission of green house gases (IPCC, 2001 a). Significant increase in green house gases results in the substantial increase in temperature. The main green house gas to human activities is carbon dioxide. Anthropogenic emission has increased the atmospheric concentration of CO2 from 280 PPM to 375 PPP at present. Due to increase in the concentration level of GHG, it has been estimated that global average surface temperature by 2100 will be between 1.4oC to 5.8oC more than the 1990 level. Due to unp0recedented increase in temperature the following potential future singular events may occur: " a shut down of the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic (the so called North Atlantic current). This may lead to considerable cooling in northern and western Europe- emission of large amounts of methane from natural gas hydrates in the ocean, deep lakes and polar sediments which could accelerate