Is Global Warming taking place?
Well, have you noticed that since when you were a little kid the summers have been getting closer to record breaking temperatures, every year?
These dramatic temperature changes aren't an illusion. These temperature fluctuations are a result of greenhouse gas accumulations.
Greenhouse gases, such as, carbon dioxide and methane, accumulate to cause Global warming. Global warming effects the global temperature. Greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere. The Greenhouse effect takes place.
Effects
(http://www.effectofglobalwarming.com/)
Current Global Warming impacts on the environment:
1. Melting Ice occurring at Earth’s poles. Melting ice: mountain glaciers, ice sheets covering West Antarctica to Greenland, and Arctic sea ice.
2. Researcher/Tracker Bill Fraser reported the decline of the Adélie penguins in Antarctica. The penguin population has fallen from 32,000 breeding pairs to 11,000 in 30 years.
3. The Sea level has risen faster over the last century.
4. Migration paths are changing species of butterflies, foxes, and alpine plants. They have moved farther north or to higher, cooler areas.
5. Precipitation (rain and snowfall) has increased across the globe, on average.
6. Spruce bark beetles have boomed in Alaska thanks to 20 years of warm summers. The insects have chewed up 4 million acres of spruce trees.
Possible future effects
(http://www.effectofglobalwarming.com/)
Future Global Warming impacts on the environment:
1. Sea levels are expected to rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 and 59 centimeters) by the end of the century, and continued melting at the poles could add between 4 and 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters).
2. Hurricanes and other storms will become stronger.
3. Species that depend on one anoter will fall out of sync. For example, plants could bloom earlier than their pollinating insects become active.
4. Floods and droughts will become more common. Rainfall in Ethiopia will decrease by 10 percent over the next 50 years.
5. Less fresh water will be available. The Quelccaya ice cap in Peru will melt by the year 2100, and leave thousands of people without drinking water or electricity.
6. Disease occurrences will increase, such as malaria carried by mosquitoes.
7. Ecosystems will change—some species will move farther north and become more successful. Some species won’t be able to move, forcing them toward extinction. Since the mid-1980s, with less ice on which to live and fish for food, polar bears have gotten considerably skinnier(Wildlife research scientist Martyn Obbard). Polar bear biologist Ian Stirling has found a similar pattern in Hudson Bay. He fears that if sea ice disappears, the polar bears will as well.
The Earth will begin to suffer.
On 16 July, a helicopter spotted this 30-meter-wide hole in Siberia. Many explanations have been put forward for the mysterious void, with its frozen interior walls and lake at the bottom – the current favorite is an underground gas explosion. It could be the remains of a pingo.
A pingo is a mound of earth-covered ice up to 70 metres high and 600 meters across. It forms when water freezes under the soil surface, forming an ice lens that pushes the overlying soil up into a dome-shaped hill. Every time the ground freezes and thaws, the pingo grows, and the extra weight pushes its base deeper underground.
When temperatures warm, the ice supporting the pingo melts. If it all melts the pingo can collapse, leaving a massive hole – playfully called an "ognip". This happened in Siberia. Such holes may become more common as the world's pingos melt.
Mountains will change. Glacial knives, or horns, like the Matterhorn on the border between Switzerland and Italy, sharply cut pointed mountains. They form when several glaciers form around the same mountain.
Glaciers on mountainsides drag rocks and soil downward, forming an amphitheatre-shaped valley called a cirque. When three or more cirques form on different sides of the same mountain, the result is a pointed mountain with several spine-like ridges, called arêtes, between the cirques.
When they first form, glacial horns are hidden by ice, but if the glaciers melt they reveal the dangerous-looking sculpted peaks. Most of Earth's existing glacial horns formed during the last ice age. As global warming melts glaciers, we will see more glacial horns emerge.
Mountain climbing will become increasingly more dangerous. Mountaineers on summer climbs often struggle to pass randklufts: large crevasses or gaps between a glacier or snowfield and the steep rock of the mountain it rests against. A randkluft forms when the rock face warms from underneath, melting the snow on its surface. They can be very dangerous, particularly in the summer when they become deeper and wider.
Randklufts are normally confined to relatively low-lying glaciers, but as global temperatures rise they will form higher up. The low-lying randklufts will become increasingly treacherous until they melt away entirely.
Nature will get confused. Unlike crop circles, irregular stone patterns are no hoax. A stone circle begins to form in autumn, when daily freeze-thaw cycles cause a lens-shaped pocket of ice to form under the soil. The lens grows as water trickles in, pushing the earth up and forming a mound on the surface. Larger sediments roll off the mound, collecting around the edges, while the finer sediments in the middle settle, leaving a distinctive stone ring.
When many rings neighbor each other they form polygons. On steep slopes this process forms stone stripes.
As the Earth warms, regions that were once frozen year-round will start undergoing freeze-thaw cycles, so more stone circles will emerge. However, we may see fewer circles forming in regions that warm so much they no longer freeze at all.
We will experience more ice wedge polygons. An ice wedge is a crack in the ground that forms when a narrow piece of ice extends several meters down into the ground. When the ice melts in summer, more water seeps into the crack, so when it freezes again it gets wider. When many of these cracks form in a single region, they can divide the surface into regular polygonal pieces.
Ice wedge polygons need freezing winters to form, but they also need a summer thaw, and warmer summer temperatures could allow areas further north to experience that.
Glaciers will move. Glaciers leave behind a lot of rock and soil debris, called moraine, when they melt. Moraines can act as dams for the melt-water from the lost glacier, creating moraine-dammed glacial lakes. They look calm, but moraine-dammed lakes are unstable. Given the appropriate trigger they burst, and torrents of water up to 50 meters deep escape. Peak flow rates can reach 15,000 cubic meters per second. The floods that follow will be devastating. These floods can happen anywhere that has glaciers, but central Asia, South America's Andes and Europe's Alps are at greatest risk.
Increasing numbers of moraine-dammed lakes have been seen over the past century as glaciers have retreated. The associated floods may also become more common.
Now, you can reminisce about the “old days”, when you were little. The summers have been getting closer to record breaking temperatures, every year?
You realize that this isn’t an illusion, and these temperature changes are a result of greenhouse gases. G.H. gases, carbon dioxide and methane, overload in the atmosphere causing Global warming.
Global Warming is a dramatic climate change, and is becoming an environmental and humanitarian crisis.
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