The climate of the Earth is influenced with set of factors, including those on which the human has no an opportunity to influence, for example, astronomical and geological. However in last decades it is more and more spoken about influence of a human civilization on a climate.
Forecasts about change of a climate are done on the basis of mathematical models which use various sources of the information. In particular, it is data by satellites (approximately for last 20 years), statistics of world temperatures (similar measurements are constantly made since the middle of 19th century), and also Paleozoic-climatic data (those receive using archeological and geological researches, the analysis of an ancient ice - for example, the ice in Antarctica contains bubbles of air which analysis allows to define concentration of carbonic acid, methane ,gases and so forth a lot of millennia back) .
In the last decade the set of forecasts about destructive consequences of global warming is published. The basic conclusions are approximately those: increase in quantity and duration of droughts and forest fires, increase in number of powerful flooding and hurricanes; to epidemics, famine and so on
For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (unites 2.5 thousand scientists from the 130 countries) in 2007 has predicted, that if the world temperature will raise on 1.5-2.5 degrees on a scale of Celsius under threat of disappearance there will be 30 % of animals and plants. By 2050 more than 1 billion person will suffer from chronic shortage of potable water. By 2020 in hot parts of a planet the agricultural areas be cut by half.
The report published in 2007 by the United Nations program on the Environment, in particular approves, that in Antarctic and Greenland are stored 98-99 % of a surface fresh-water ice of a planet. If the ice cover of Greenland will thaw completely, the level of world ocean can rise on 7 meters. But even in case if the ice cap of Greenland will thaw on 20 %, and Antarctic’s - on 5 % it will lead to rising of a level of world ocean on 4-5 meters. This all can happen in the next century. Thawing of these glacial covers jointly with thawing of mountain glaciers and snow caps has already led to that the level of world ocean has risen on 20 cm for the period between 1870 and 2001. And the level of ocean rose annually on 3 millimeters during between the beginning 1990 and 2006.
Increase of a level of ocean on 1 meter will lead to that 145 million person will appear in area of overflowing and flooding. It can lead to disappearance of some countries, for example, Holland, Pakistan and Israel, to flooding of a greater part of Japan and some other island states. Such cities, as St.-Petersburg (Russia) and New York (USA) can disappear under water.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you found this page useful, consider linking to it.
Simply copy and paste the code below into your web site (Ctrl+C to copy)
It will look like this: Global warming ~ a collection of the facts (part 1)