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Global Environmental Change: Technology and the Future of Planet Earth Where will all the heat go?

Global Environmental Change: Technology and the Future of Planet Earth Where will all the heat go?. Outline. Evidence for global climate change Future atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations Simulations of global climate and future climate change How much change is “safe”? Summary.

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Global Environmental Change: Technology and the Future of Planet Earth Where will all the heat go?

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  1. Global Environmental Change:Technology and the Future of Planet EarthWhere will all the heat go?

  2. Outline • Evidence for global climate change • Future atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations • Simulations of global climate and future climate change • How much change is “safe”? • Summary

  3. resweb.llu.edu/.../VGD/LUCC/background1.html Source: Turner, B.L. 1989. The human causes of global environmental change. His Figure 11.1, p.91; reprinted with per-mission from the National Academy of Sciences

  4. Types of Global Environmental Change These yet-unanswered questions point to another set of fundamental concepts in the study of global environmental changes. We need to define what types of environmental changes we ought to expect. Here, we present two ways of identifying environmental changes: the first aggregates changes in a genetic sense, i.e., by asking "how do the changes come about?"; the second views changes according to their occurrence, i.e., by asking "in which earth system do we find changes?". Such typologies help us detect, analyze, and understand global changes and thus ultimately to manage them.

  5. www.rri.wvu.edu/.../listoffigures.htm Humanities-based theories Contributions to the analysis of how people relate to nature and the environment originate mainly in the disciplines of history, anthropology and psychology within the broader academic terrain of the Humanities Studies. The terms "environmental history", "environmental (and/or cultural) anthropology", and "environmental psychology" usually denote the particular subdisciplines specializing in the above theme. The following discussion is a selective presentation of characteristic approaches from the broad collection of contributions in each of the three sub-disciplines. Environmental history is concerned with recording, presenting, and analyzing the socio-economic, political, institutional, and cultural forces that have shaped and transformed particular environments spanning all spatial scales from the local to the global (see, for example, the contributions in Turner et al. 1990). A theory advanced to provide a broad explanatory framework for the historical changes in the uses of land under the influence of the above-mentioned forces is the frontier thesis (Richards 1990) which is applicable to all scales but it seems more suitable to the larger regional and global scales.

  6. A Genetic Typology of Global Environmental Change: • Systemic Change  • Cumulative Change  • An Occurrence-Oriented Typology of Global Environmental Change  • Changes in material and energy flows  • Changes in biota  • 3. Changes in the physical structure of the biosphere

  7. Carbon Dioxide and Temperature

  8. Carbon Dioxide and Temperature 2005

  9. Carbon Dioxide and Temperature 2040 2005

  10. Carbon Dioxide and Temperature Stabilization at 550 ppm

  11. Carbon Dioxide and Temperature “Business as Usual” (fossil intensive) 2100

  12. Associated Climate Changes • Global sea-level has increased 1-2 mm/yr • Duration of ice cover of rivers and lakes decreased by 2 weeks in N. Hemisphere • Arctic ice has thinned substantially, decreased in extent by 10-15% • Reduced permafrost in polar, sub-polar, mountainous regions • Growing season lengthened by 1-4 days in N. Hemisphere • Retreat of continental glaciers on all continents • Poleward shift of animal and plant ranges • Snow cover decreased by 10% • Earlier flowering dates • Coral reef bleaching Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001 Report

  13. Mann, M. E., R. S. Bailey, and M. K. Hughes, 1999: Geophysical Research Letters 26, 759.

  14. www.boilermakers.org/resources/news/climate_c... THE DISCOVERY OF global warming has its roots in an unlikely source — the search for an explanation of the ice ages. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the idea of ice ages was new, and scientists were clamoring for an explanation of how they began. Weather fluctuations are normal, but always within narrow confines. What would cause temperatures to drop so much that ice sheets miles thick would cover vast reaches of the northern hemisphere? This question led to interesting discoveries. In 1824 Joseph Fourier explained the greenhouse effect, and in 1859 John Tyndall identified several greenhouse gases — most notably carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor. Water vapor is the main cause of the greenhouse effect, with CO2 a distant second.

  15. Land Use and Land Cover Change In the study of global change, human interactions with the environment are tackled in one of three fundamental ways: (1) the human causes of change, (2) the consequences for, or impacts of changes in the environment on, society, and (3) the societal responses to change. We have already seen that the ways in which humans use the earth's resources in their sociocultural, technological, economic, political, and organizational context provides the entry point to gaining a better understanding of global change. The study of land use and land cover is central in this respect . Land use is the observed immediate reason and/or manifestation of environmental change. Consider the following examples: Agricultural and forestry practices have changed entire landscapes; land-management practices more generally alter plant and animal communities both at the species and habitat level, or they affect nutrient cycling and distribution in the soil; creation or changes of transportation routes dissect habitats, and alter water and energy flows; industrial emissions affect environmental and human health and built structures (as for example through acid deposition, or the destruction of the ozone layer). Similarly, we must be interested in how humans adjust to a variable and changing environment, which factors facilitate or impede such adjustments and adaptations, and which factors augment or diminish societal vulnerability to, say, climatic variability, and thus what might be the most effective avenues to take in response to global environmental changes.

  16. Source: Ojima, Galvin, and Turner 1994; their Figure 1, p.301; reprinted with permission from the American Inst. of Biol. Sciences.

  17. El Chichon (1982) Agung, 1963 Mt. Pinatubo (1991) Hansen, Scientific American, March 2004

  18. Source: IPCC, 2001: Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis

  19. Source: IPCC, 2001: Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis

  20. Change in Downwelling Longwave Radiation vs. Change in Surface Temperature Longwave Down Surface (2m) Temperature Normalized Change From GEWEX News, 14, 1 (November 2004); http://gewx.org/gewex_nwsltr.html

  21. NASA photographs show the minimm Arctic sea ice concentration in 1979 at left and in 2003.Satellite passive microwave data since 1970s indicate a 3% decrease per decade in arctic sea ice extent.

  22. Since 1979, the size of the summer polar ice cap has shrunk more than 20 percent. (Illustration from NASA) (http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/qthinice.asp)

  23. Source: Jerry Meehl, National Center for Atmospheric Research

  24. Source: National Center for Atmospheric Research

  25. The planet is committed to a warming over the next 50 years regardless of political decisions Source: National Center for Atmospheric Research

  26. Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001 Report

  27. 40% Probability 5% Probability Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001 Report

  28. Climate Change Projected for 2100 Rapid Economic Growth Slower Economic Growth

  29. Source: Corell, R. W., 2004: Impacts of a warming Arctic. Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (www.acia.uaf.edu) Cambridge University Press (www.cambridge.org).

  30. Kennedy Space Center Impact of a 1-m rise in sea level on low-lying areas Source: Corell, R. W., 2004: Impacts of a warming Arctic. Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (www.acia.uaf.edu) Cambridge University Press (www.cambridge.org). Areas subjected to Inundation with a 1 m (~3 ft) rise in sea level Miami

  31. Climate Surprises • Breakdown of the ocean thermohaline circulation (Greenland melt water) • Breakoff of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet larvatusprodeo.net/.../

  32. www.aiaccproject.org/about/right_frame.html Global environmental change vulnerabilities, risks, and responses: a framework for "second generation" assessment.

  33. Kennedy Space Center Areas subjected to Inundation with a 1 m (~3 ft) rise in sea level Miami

  34. DROUGHT INCREASING Climate change is intensifying the circulation of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth — causing drought and floods to be more frequent, severe and widespread. Higher temperatures increase the amount of moisture that evaporates from land and water, leading to drought in many areas. Lands affected by drought are more vulnerable to flooding once rain falls. As temperatures rise globally, droughts will become more frequent and more severe, with potentially devastating consequences for agriculture, water supply and human health. This phenomenon has already been observed in some parts of Asia and Africa, where droughts have become longer and more intense. Hot temperatures and dry conditions also increase the likelihood of forest fires. In the conifer forests of the western United States, earlier snowmelts, longer summers and an increase in spring and summer temperatures have increased fire frequency by 400 percent and have increased the amount of land burned by 650 percent since 1970.

  35. Heat Absorption by Ice Masses • Arctic ice • Antarctic ice • Mountain glaciers • Mt. Kilimanjaro glacier will disappear within 20 years • Chacaltaya glacier, Andes Mountains, will disappear in 7-8 years (water supply for La Paz, Bolivia) • Italian Alps will lose its permanent ice in 20-30 years • Glacier National Park is losing ice at an accelerating rate

  36. As the Earth heats up, sea levels rise because warmer water takes up more room than colder water, a process known as thermal expansion. Melting glaciers compound the problem by dumping even more fresh water into the oceans. Rising seas threaten to inundate low-lying areas and islands, threaten dense coastal populations, erode shorelines, damage property and destroy ecosystems such as mangroves and wetlands that protect coasts against storms. Sea levels have risen between four and eight inches in the past 100 years. Current projections suggest that sea levels could continue to rise between 4 inches and 36 inches over the next 100 years. Hansen, Scientific American, March 2004

  37. What Consitutes “Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference with the Climate System”? James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies: * Radiative forcing limit: 1 Watt/ m2 * 1 oC additional rise in global mean temperature

  38. Summary • Climate change is real and we need to be doing something about it • The longer we wait, the fewer our options • Regional patterns of warming will be complicated • Climate surprises can’t be discounted • We need dialog on what constitutes “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”

  39. For More Information • For peer-reviewed evidence supporting everything you have seen in this presentation, see my online Global Change course: http://www.meteor.iastate.edu/gccourse • Contact me directly: gstakle@iastate.edu • For a copy of this presentation: http://www.meteor.iastate.edu/faculty/takle/

  40. Global Environmental Change:Technology and the Future of Planet EarthWhere will all the heat go? Eugene S. Takle Agronomy Department Geological and Atmospheric Science Department Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 50011 gstakle@iastate.edu Mechanical Engineering 484X, 8 February 2005

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