Earth Warming

Places on Earth where you can still see ice

2022-06-01T01:16:00.003-07:00

Have you ever been fascinated by the fact that there are places on Earth where you can still see the ice?

Blog intro: We all know that the Earth is warming up. In fact, we have gone through 5 of the last 6 warmest years. But some places are so cold that they still have ice in them. Here are just some of them.

#1. Svalbard Global Seed Vault

Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located in Norway, is a seed bank that houses more than 10 million seeds from around the world.

#2. Antarctica

The continent of Antarctica is the coldest and windiest place on Earth. And there are still places where you can see ice.

#3. The Arctic Circle

The Arctic Circle is located in northern Scandinavia and marks the border between the North Pole and the rest of the planet.

#4. Greenland

Greenland is the world's largest island and is also the northernmost country in the world.

#5. The Himalayas

The Himalayas are a mountain range in the south Asia. There are more than 1,500 glaciers located here.

Comets and Origin of Life

2022-05-09T22:11:00.003-07:00

Comets are bodies of ice, dust, and rock that orbit the Sun and exhibit a coma (or atmosphere) extending away from the Sun as a tail when they are close to the Sun. They have orbital periods that range from a few years to a few hundred or even thousands of years. Short-period comets have orbital periods of fewer than 200 years, and most of these orbit in the plane of the ecliptic in the same direction as the planets. Their orbits take them past the orbit of Jupiter at aphelion, and near the Sun at perihelion.

Long-period comets have highly elongated or eccentric orbits, with periods longer than 200 years and extending to thousands or perhaps even millions of years. These comets range far beyond the orbits of the outer planets, although they remain gravitationally bound to the Sun. Another class of comets, called single-apparition comets, have a hyperbolic trajectory that sends them past the inner solar system only once, then they are ejected from the solar system. Before late 20th-century space probes collected data on comets, comets were thought to be composed primarily of ices and to be lone wanderers of the solar system.

Now, with detailed observations, it is clear that comets and asteroids are transitional in nature, both in composition and in orbital character. Comets are now known to consist of rocky cores with ices around them or in pockets, and many have an organic-rich dark surface. Many asteroids are also made of similar mixtures of rocky material with pockets of ice. There are so many rocky/icy bodies in the outer solar system in the Kuiper belt and Oort Cloud that comets are now regarded as the most abundant type of bodies in the universe. There may be one trillion comets in the solar system, of which only about 3,350 have been cataloged. Most are long-period comets, but several hundred short-period comets are known as well.

The heads of comets can be divided into several parts, including the nucleus; the coma, or gaseous rim from which the tail extends; and a diffuse cloud of hydrogen. The heads of comets can be quite large, some larger than moons or other objects including Pluto. Most cometary nuclei range between 0.3 and 30 miles (0.5–50 km) in diameter and consist of a mixture of silicate rock, dust, water ice, and other frozen gases such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, ammonia, and methane. Some comets contain a variety of organic compounds including methanol, hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, ethanol, and ethane, as well as complex hydrocarbons and amino acids. Although some comets have many organic molecules, no life is known to exist on or be derived from comets.

These organic molecules make cometary nuclei some of the darkest objects in the universe, reflecting only 2–4 percent of the light that falls on their surfaces. This dark color may actually help comets absorb heat, promoting the release of gases to form the tail. Cometary tails can change in length, and can be 80 times larger than the head when the comet passes near the Sun. As a comet approaches the Sun, it begins to emit jets of ices consisting of methane, water, and ammonia, and other ices.

Modeling of the comet surface by astronomers suggests that the tails form when the radiation from the Sun cracks the crust of the comet and begins to vaporize the volatiles like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen, carrying away dust from the comet in the process. The mixture of dust and gases emitted by the comet then forms a large but weak atmosphere around the comet, called the coma. The radiation and solar wind from the Sun causes this coma to extend outward away from the Sun, forming a huge tail.

The tail is complex and consists of two parts. The first part contains the gases released from the comet forming an ion tail that gets elongated in a direction pointing directly away from the Sun and may extend along magnetic field lines for more than 1 astronomical unit (9,321,000 miles; 150,000,000 km). The second part is the coma, or thin atmosphere from which the tail extends, which may become larger than the Sun. Dust released by the comet forms a tail with a slightly different orientation, forming a curved trail that follows the orbital path of the comet around the Sun. Short-period comets originate in the Kuiper belt, whereas long-period comets originate in the Oort Cloud.

Many comets are pulled out of their orbits by gravitational interactions with the Sun and planets or by collisions with other bodies. When these events place comets in orbital paths that cross the inner solar system, these comets may make close orbits to the Sun, and may also collide with planets, including the Earth. Several space missions have recently investigated the properties of comets. These include Deep Space 1, which flew by Comet Borrelly in 2001. Comet Borrelly is a relative small comet, about 5 miles (8 km) at its longest point, and the mission showed that the comet consists of asteroid-like rocky material, along with icy plains from which the dust jets that form the coma were being emitted.

In 1999 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched the Stardust Comet Sample Return Mission, which flew through the tail of comet Wild 2 and collected samples of the tail in a silica gel and returned them to Earth in 2006. Scientists were expecting to find many particles of interstellar dust or the extrasolar material that composes the solar nebula, but instead found little of this material; instead they found predominantly silicate mineral grains of Earthlike solar system composition.

The samples collected revealed that comet Wild 2 is made of a bizarre mixture of material that includes some particles that formed at the highest temperatures in the early solar system, and some particles that formed at the coldest temperatures. To explain this, scientists have suggested that the rocky material that makes up the comet formed in the inner solar system during its early history, then was ejected to the outer bounds of the solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune, where the icy material was accreted to the comet.

Calciumaluminum inclusions, which represent some of the oldest, highest temperature parts of the early solar system, were also collected from the comet. One of the biggest surprises was the capture of a new class of organic material from the comet tail. These organic molecules are more primitive than any on Earth and than those found in any meteorites; they are known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Some samples even contain alcohol.

These types of hydrocarbons, thought to exist in interstellar space, may yield clues about the origin of water, oxygen, carbon, and even life on Earth. Comets are rich in water, carbon, nitrogen, and complex organic molecules that originate deep in space from radiation-induced chemical processes. Many of the organic molecules in the coma of comets originated in the dust of the solar nebula at the time and location where the comets initially formed in the early history of the solar system. Comets are relatively small bodies that have preserved these early organic molecules in a cold, relatively pristine state. This has led many scientists to speculate that life may have come to Earth on a comet, early in the history of the planet. Clearly, comets both delivered organic material to the early Earth and also destroyed and altered organic material with the heat and shock from impacts. Numerical models of the impact of organic-rich comets with Earth show that some of the organic molecules could have survived the force of impact.

The organic molecules in comets may be the source of the prebiotic molecules that led to the origins of life on Earth. Studies of the chemistry and origin of the atmosphere and oceans suggest that the entire atmosphere, ocean, and much of the carbon on Earth, including that caught up in carbonate rocks like limestone, originated from cometary impact.

The period of late impacts of comets and meteorites on Earth lasted about a billion years after the formation of Earth, before greatly diminishing in intensity. Life on Earth began during this time, hinting at a possible link between the transport of organic molecules to Earth by comets, and the development of these molecules into life.

The early atmosphere of Earth was also carbon dioxide–rich (much of which came from comets), however, and organic synthesis was also occurring on Earth. In addition to bringing organic molecules to Earth, the energy from impacts certainly destroyed much of any biosphere that attempted to establish itself on the early Earth. Even the late, very minor KT impact at Chicxulub had major repercussions for life on Earth.

Certainly the early bombardment characterized by many very large impacts would have had a more profound effect on life. Any life that had established itself on Earth would need to be sheltered from the harsh surface environment, perhaps finding refuge along the deep sea volcanic systems known as black smokers, where temperatures remained hot but stable, and nutrients in the form of sulfide compounds were used by early organisms for energy.

What Are Conditions Like on the Outer Planets?

2022-04-19T03:54:00.001-07:00

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are the outer planets of our solar system. These are the four planets farthest from the Sun. The outer planets are much larger than the inner planets. Since they are mostly made of gases, they are also called gas giants.

The gas giants are mostly made of hydrogen and helium. These are the same elements that make up most of the Sun. Astronomers think that most of the nebula were hydrogen and helium. The inner planets lost these very light gases. In the inner solar system, the gases were too hot for the gravity of the inner planets to keep them. In the outer solar system, it was cold enough for the gravity of the planets to keep the colder slower-moving hydrogen and helium gas.

All of the outer planets have numerous moons. They also have planetary rings made of ice. Only the rings of Saturn can be easily seen from Earth. Jupiter is truly a giant! The planet has 318 times the mass of Earth and about 1400 times Earth’s volume. So Jupiter is much less dense than Earth.

Because Jupiter is so large, it reflects a lot of sunlight. When it is visible, it is the brightest object in the night sky beside the Sun. Jupiter is quite far from the Earth. The planet is more than five times as far from the Sun as Earth. It takes Jupiter about 12 Earth years to orbit once around the Sun. A Ball of Gas and Liquid

Since Jupiter is a gas giant, could a spacecraft land on its surface? The answer is no. There is no solid surface at all! Jupiter is made mostly of hydrogen, with some helium, and small amounts of other elements. The outer layers of the planet are gas. Deeper within the planet, the intense pressure condenses the gases into a liquid. Jupiter may have a small rocky core at its center.

A Stormy Atmosphere

Jupiter's atmosphere is made mostly of hydrogen and helium gas. There are also small amounts of other gases that contain hydrogen, like methane, ammonia, and water vapor. Astronomers think that clouds in the atmosphere are particles of water, ice, and compounds made of ammonia. Alternating cloud bands rotate around the planet in opposite directions. Colors in these cloud bands may come from complex organic molecules.

The Great Red Spot, shown in the Figure above, is Jupiter's most noticeable feature. The spot is an enormous, oval-shaped storm. It can expand to be more than two times as wide as the entire Earth! Clouds in the storm rotate counterclockwise. They make one complete turn every six days or so. The Great Red Spot has been on Jupiter for at least 300 years. It may have been observed as early as 1664. It is possible that this storm is a permanent feature on Jupiter. No one knows for sure.

Jupiter’s Moons and Rings

Jupiter has lots of moons. As of 2012, we have discovered over 67 natural satellites of Jupiter. Four are big enough and bright enough to be seen from Earth using a pair of binoculars. These four moons were first discovered by Galileo in 1610. They are called the Galilean moons. The Figure below shows the four Galilean moons and their sizes relative to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. These moons are named Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

The Galilean moons are larger than even the biggest dwarf planets, Pluto and Eris. Ganymede is the biggest moon in the solar system. It is even larger than the planet Mercury! Scientists think that Europa is a good place to look for extraterrestrial life. Europa is the smallest of the Galilean moons. The moon's surface is a smooth layer of ice.

Scientists think that the ice may sit on top of an ocean of liquid water. How could Europa have liquid water when it is so far from the Sun? Europa is heated by differences in Jupiter’s gravity as Europa’s distance changes during an orbit. These tidal forces are so great that they stretch and squash its moon. This could produce enough heat for there to be liquid water. Various missions have been discussed to explore Europa, including the idea to have a probe melt deep down through the ice into the ocean. However, no such mission has yet been attempted.

In 1979, two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 visited Jupiter and its moons. Photos from the Voyager missions showed that Jupiter has a ring system. This ring system is very faint, so it is very difficult to observe from Earth.

2: Saturn

Saturn, shown in the figure below, is famous for its beautiful rings. Saturn is the second largest planet in the solar system. Saturn’s mass is about 95 times Earth's mass. The gas giant is 755 times Earth’s volume. Despite its large size, Saturn is the least dense planet in our solar system. Saturn is actually less dense than water. This means that if there were a bathtub big enough, Saturn would float! In Roman mythology, Saturn was the father of Jupiter. Saturn orbits the Sun once about every 30 Earth years.

Saturn is the least dense planet in our solar system.

Saturn’s composition is similar to Jupiter's. The planet is made mostly of hydrogen and helium. These elements are gases in the outer layers and liquids in the deeper layers. Saturn may also have a small solid core. Saturn's upper atmosphere has clouds in bands of different colors. These clouds rotate rapidly around the planet. But Saturn has fewer storms than Jupiter.

Saturn’s Rings

Saturn's rings were first observed by Galileo in 1610. He didn't know they were rings and thought that they were two large moons. One moon was on either side of the planet. In 1659, the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens realized that they were rings circling Saturn’s equator. The rings appear tilted. This is because Saturn’s rotation axis is tilted about 27 degrees from a line perpendicular to its orbit.

The Voyager 1 spacecraft visited Saturn in 1980. Voyager 2 followed in 1981. These probes sent back detailed pictures of Saturn, its rings, and some of its moons. The Cassini spacecraft has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004. From the Voyager and Cassini data, we learned that Saturn’s rings are made of mostly ice particles of different sizes with a little bit of dust. There are several gaps in the rings. The gaps result from gravitational interactions between the ring particles and Saturn’s moons that orbit outside the ring or by a small moon orbiting within the gap.

Saturn’s Moons

As of 2012, over 62 moons have been identified around Saturn. Only seven of Saturn’s moons are round. All but one is smaller than Earth’s moon. Some of the very small moons are found within the rings. All the particles in the rings are like little moons because they orbit around Saturn.

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is about one and a half times the diameter of Earth’s moon. Titan is even larger than the planet Mercury. Scientists are very interested in Titan. The moon has an atmosphere that is thought to be like Earth’s first atmosphere. This atmosphere was around before life developed on Earth. Like Jupiter's moon, Europa, Titan may have a layer of liquid water under a layer of ice. Scientists now think that there are lakes on Titan's surface. Don't take a dip, though. These lakes contain liquid methane and ethane instead of water! Methane and ethane are compounds found in natural gas.

Uranus

Uranus is the 7th planet out from the Sun. Uranus' rings are almost perpendicular to the planet. Uranus, shown in the figure above, is named for the Greek god of the sky, the father of Saturn. Astronomers pronounce the name “YOOR-uh-nuhs.” Uranus was not known to ancient observers. The planet was first discovered with a telescope by the astronomer William Herschel in 1781.

Uranus is faint because it is very far away. Its distance from the Sun is 2.8 billion kilometers (1.8 billion miles). A photon from the Sun takes about 2 hours and 40 minutes to reach Uranus. Uranus orbits the Sun once about every 84 Earth years. An Icy Blue-Green Ball

Uranus is a lot like Jupiter and Saturn. The planet is composed mainly of hydrogen and helium, but Uranus has a higher percentage of “ices” than Jupiter and Saturn. These “ices” include water, ammonia, and methane. Uranus is also different because of its blue-green color. Methane gas absorbs red light so the reflected light gives Uranus a blue-green color. The atmosphere of Uranus has bands of clouds. These clouds are hard to see in normal light. The result is that the planet looks like a plain blue ball.

Uranus is the least massive outer planet. Its mass is only about 14 times the mass of Earth. Like all of the outer planets, Uranus is much less dense than Earth. Gravity is actually weaker than on Earth’s surface. If you were at the top of the clouds on Uranus, you would weigh about 10 percent less than what you weigh on Earth.

The Sideways Planet

All of the planets rotate on their axes in the same direction that they move around the Sun except for Venus and Uranus. While Venus rotates in the opposite direction, Uranus is tilted on its side. Its axis is almost parallel to its orbit. How did Uranus get this way? One possibility is that the planet was struck by a large planet-sized object as it was forming during the early days of the solar system.

Rings and Moons of Uranus

Uranus has a faint system of rings, as shown in the Figure below. The rings circle the planet’s equator. However, Uranus is tilted on its side. So the rings are almost perpendicular to the planet’s orbit. We have discovered 27 moons around Uranus. All but a few are named for characters from the plays of William Shakespeare. 4: Neptune

Neptune is shown in the Figure below. It is the eighth planet from the Sun. Neptune is so far away you need a telescope to see it from Earth. Neptune is the most distant planet in our solar system. It is nearly 4.5 billion kilometers (2.8 billion miles) from the Sun. One orbit around the Sun takes Neptune 165 Earth years.

Neptune has a great dark spot at the center-left and a small dark spot at the bottom center.

Scientists guessed Neptune's existence before it was discovered. Uranus did not always appear exactly where it should. They said this was because a planet beyond Uranus was pulling on it. This gravitational pull was affecting its orbit. Neptune was discovered in 1846. It was just where scientists predicted it would be! The planet was named Neptune for the Roman god of the sea.

Uranus and Neptune are often considered “sister planets.” They are very similar to each other. Neptune has slightly more mass than Uranus, but it is slightly smaller in size.

Extremes of Cold and Wind

Like Uranus, Neptune is blue. The blue color is mostly caused by the absorption of red light by methane in Neptune’s atmosphere. Neptune is not a smooth-looking ball like Uranus. The planet has a few darker and lighter spots. When Voyager 2 visited Neptune in 1986, there was a large dark-blue spot south of the equator. This spot was called the Great Dark Spot. When the Hubble Space Telescope photographed Neptune in 1994, the Great Dark Spot had disappeared. Another dark spot had appeared north of the equator.

Neptune's appearance changes due to its turbulent atmosphere. Winds are stronger than on any other planet in the solar system. Wind speeds can reach 1,100 km/h (700 mph). This is close to the speed of sound! The rapid winds surprised astronomers. This is because Neptune receives little energy from the Sun to power weather systems. It is not surprising that Neptune is one of the coldest places in the solar system. Temperatures at the top of the clouds are about –218°C (–360°F).

Neptune’s Rings and Moons

Like the other outer planets, Neptune has rings of ice and dust. These rings are much thinner and fainter than Saturn's. Neptune's rings may be unstable. They may change or disappear in a relatively short time.

Neptune has 13 known moons. Only Triton, shown in the Figure below, has enough mass to be round. Triton orbits in the direction opposite to Neptune's orbit. Because of this, scientists think Triton did not form around Neptune. The satellite may have been captured by Neptune’s gravity as it passed very close to Neptune.

· The four outer planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune — are all gas giants made mostly of hydrogen and helium. Their thick outer layers are gases and have liquid interiors.

· All of the outer planets have lots of moons, as well as planetary rings made of dust and other particles.

· Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. It has bands of different colored clouds, and a long-lasting storm called the Great Red Spot.

· Jupiter has over 60 moons. The four biggest were discovered by Galileo, and are called the Galilean moons.

· One of the Galilean moons, Europa, may have an ocean of liquid water under a layer of ice. The conditions in this ocean might be right for life to have developed.

· Saturn is smaller than Jupiter but very similar to Jupiter. Saturn has a large system of beautiful rings.

· Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, has an atmosphere similar to Earth’s atmosphere before life formed.

· Uranus and Neptune were discovered using a telescope. They are similar to each other in size and composition. They are both smaller than Jupiter and Saturn, and also have more icy materials.

· Uranus is tilted on its side, probably due to a collision with a large object in the distant past.

· Neptune is very cold and has very strong winds. It had a large dark spot that disappeared. Another dark spot appeared on another part of the planet. These dark spots are storms in Neptune’s atmosphere.

Interviews with Key Informants: The Example of Morocco

2021-09-29T20:31:00.003-07:00

One more piece of empirical evidence was collected for the qualitative fieldwork through interviews with key informants. In all five countries government officials and nongovernmental experts are well aware of the stress caused by changes in climatic conditions, and of the fact that climate change contributes to rural-urban migration flows even if today it is not the main driver of these flows. They also realize that in most cases, the lack of sufficiently ambitious and well-developed policies and programs contributes to the inability to propose concrete solutions and help to those most affected by climate change in rural areas. Many of the comments made by government officials and non-governmental experts in the various countries were similar so that rather than provide examples from all countries, it is probably more instructive to cover one country in slightly more depth.

This is done in this section for Morocco because more respondents were either experts on migration or were conducting ongoing research on migration-related issues. Key informants in Morocco explained that migration was historically by men and driven by inequitable development in rural areas. The absence of networks in destination areas made women vulnerable to prostitution or slave labor, so they were less likely to migrate than men. Migrants migrated both internationally and internally, in that case principally to Casablanca, which continues to remain as a prime destination for rural migrants since the Greater Casablanca area alone still attracts around 15 percent of all national migration flows in the country. Today territorial units nearby Casablanca have also become preferred destinations for newcomers.

This is for example the case of Ain Sebaa, Sidi Moumen, Moulay Rachid, Hay Hassani, Mohammedia city, and districts of Sidi Bernoussi and Hay Mohammadi. Migration to other cities has also picked up as rural migrants are searching for destinations closer to their homes. Key informants explained that three main features remain central to migratory flows irrespective of origin and destination locations. The first is the importance of networks which play a critical role in providing support to migrant families and in helping them to decide their destinations. A second key feature is the importance of the remittances sent by migrants, which are critical not only for household survival in rural areas but also for communities. In Tiznit for example, migrant associations are helping build two-thirds of the roads. Several informants also stated that migration facilitated women's empowerment in rural areas, as the women who remained in the countryside while their husbands were away working in the cities gained more independence and were also more likely to interact with their neighbors. A third important feature, especially in recent years, has been the role of climatic patterns in internal migration.

Drastic changes in climatic conditions have led to an expansion of shantytowns. In Tafilelt for example, a fourth of the population has migrated due to climatic hazards that had affected agricultural production. Likewise, in the Draa region which has historically been an important center of trade but more recently has been experiencing frequent and longer droughts, out-migration has increased. In general, informants agree that the so-called Oasis belt is losing its population as people are becoming increasingly affected by the negative effects of droughts. Outgoing migration is primarily stemming from the water crisis that Morocco is experiencing. Six of our respondents mentioned water as a major issue, in part due to more droughts, but also with flooding in some areas.

For example, the Tafilalt region, one of the most important oasis regions in the country, has suffered from severe droughts and flooding which in turn have undermined oasis agriculture. While droughts used to occur every four to five years, they now occur every two years. Climatic hazards are also leading to severe desertification in the Sahara region. Rising seawater levels are also a concern, among others in Saadia where tourism may have contributed to destroying plant life and consequently making the land vulnerable. A respondent suggested that 60 percent of Saadi may soon be underwater. These severe climatic conditions have had a large impact on rural populations, with farmers experiencing increased water scarcity with no access to water reserves. Women have to travel much further away to get water.

Some respondents were convinced that agricultural yields will fall by 20 percent in 20 years, which drive more migrants from rural areas toward urban centers. Life in the cities will then become difficult for both locals and migrants. Many respondents mentioned ongoing housing and employment crises in urban areas. As locals and migrants compete for survival, the integration will become a major problem and economic discrimination will rise, as may black markets and the informal economy. In large cities such as Casablanca, many migrants are already found to be living in shantytowns. The pressures of living in cities along with influences from urban lifestyles have also been weakening social structures between migrants and their families which may have severe consequences for those still living in Morocco’s rural areas.

In recognition of these challenges, respondents explained that the Moroccan government launched initiatives at both the national and local levels. One such initiative is a higher focus on rural development programs, among others, through the Human Development Initiative (HDI) which is designed to target vulnerable populations in both rural and urban areas. At the local level, the government is also conducting awareness programs to inform people about climate change. The objective is to teach people about conservation and preservation of water resources, disaster preparedness to limit the negative effects of droughts, and different irrigation schemes to encourage the agricultural sector to become independent of water resources.

Climate change has also been included as a key component in other initiatives such as Morocco Green and the Communal Development Plan. There is also an Energy Strategy Plan being initiated, and work is ongoing toward an insurance plan named ‘Natural Catastrophe Insurance.’ Active research programs are also ongoing in a few universities. Despite these initiatives, respondents perceived some fatalism, with many believing that everything is happening because of Allah’s will. And at times government programs may contribute to the issues. One respondent mentioned a dam that instead of stopping flooding drained water resources from the ground, leading to poor water quality and affecting surrounding palm trees.

Adverse Weather Trends

2021-09-29T20:25:00.006-07:00

Adverse weather trends such as increased flooding and droughts shape the decisions to migrate made by household and individuals. Climate change is widely perceived to reduce crop yields and livestock production, decrease water availability, reduce fishing populations, and limit opportunities in rural areas that depend heavily on agriculture. The goal of this chapter was to contribute to a better understanding of the relationships between climate change, environmental degradation, deterioration of agriculture, and human mobility, through an exploration of the attitudes of rural residents and urban migrants in our five focus countries. Rural residents use a range of coping mechanisms to survive, ranging from eating less and borrowing money to selling livestock and other assets.

Remittances are also important for survival, and when this source of income is insufficient, additional household members are forced to migrate to other areas in search of better opportunities. Overall, while in some countries such as Egypt and to some extent Morocco, there is a perception that migration opens up new opportunities, in other countries such as Syria, for many migrants migration may be a strategy of last resort than a real choice. While such differences between countries seem to emerge from the qualitative fieldwork and tend to also be supported by quantitative household survey data, of course, individual situations remain highly household and area-specific within each of the five countries.

The qualitative work also suggests that for urban migrants, the arduous task of obtaining a job is further hindered by corruption and fierce competition with locals for limited employment opportunities. Social dislocation is a risk, with many migrants feeling inferior, alienated, and different in their new urban environs. Many face job discrimination, harassment, and exploitation at the hands of their supervisors and would-be employers. Poor housing conditions, rising food and rent prices, and the obligation to send remittances back home place substantial pressure on urban migrants. Yet, these coexist alongside some benefits.

For example, migrants appreciate the independence, social outlets, and opportunities that urban life has to offer. A number of suggestions were made by households as well as migrants about the types of programs that could be of help to them, in both urban and rural areas. It is not the place in this chapter to comment on whether such recommendations are appropriate, or even feasible to implement by governments. In order to come up with such an assessment, a much more detailed analysis of the types of programs proposed, their cost, and their benefits, would be required.

But what does emerge from the interviews with key informants is that while government officials and nongovernmental experts are aware of the consequences of climate change and extreme weather events for the population, they also recognize that the extent to which governments are dealing with these issues today is limited. This is a finding that is also emerging from other chapters in this study, in that both the community level responses and government programs and policies not only to cope with weather shocks but also to adapt to climate change, remain insufficient.

Forest in Trouble

2021-05-25T00:54:00.001-07:00

As the 1990s progressed, it became clear to those of us in public health that a wave of infectious diseases was striking humans and many other forms of life. Humans faced multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, Ebola, HIV, and dozens of other new pathogens. Crops were becoming infested with insects and infected with emerging viruses. Dolphins, whales, and seals were suffering from measles-like viruses, while fish were going belly up en masse with increasing frequency. Even trees were in trouble.

Throughout the 1990s, I’d been trying to forge a new synthesis that would explain how a changing world could breed a wave of epidemics. I had begun my intellectual exploration into health and global change by gazing at a diagram that hangs in frames on the walls of public health offices nationwide. The diagram consists of three interlocking circles, emblazoned with the letters A, H, and E. It is known as a Venn diagram, and it holds the key to epidemiology, the study of epidemics.

The circle labeled A represents the agent—meaning the bacterium, virus, parasite, or fungus that can, if conditions are right, infect a person, plant, or animal. The second circle, H, represents the host—the organism that becomes infected with the agent. The third circle, E, represents the environment—the external conditions that determine whether the agent will invade a host. The same three factors—agent, host, and environment—control whether people develop other diseases as well. The take-home lesson is that there are most often multiple causes for any one person’s sickness.

The agent causing tuberculosis, for example, is the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. But even if M. tuberculosis is present, the disease won’t always develop. It will be more likely to occur if the host is weakened, perhaps by malnutrition or an HIV infection, and if conditions are ripe for transmission. Ideal tuberculosis-transmitting conditions occur in close quarters, such as those in the gold mines of South Africa or 1980s-era crack houses or prisons in New York City, where infected people cough profusely into common airspace. A host with a strong immune system living in a healthy environment can usually fight off the infection by surrounding the slow-growing bacteria with immune cells, effectively quarantining them and preventing the disease. But a weak host in close quarters is more likely to be infected and have trouble fighting the disease.

This framework of agent, host, and environment, I’d realized, could be adapted to assess the impacts of global change. When global change is considered, ecosystems are the host. This analogy works on several levels. First, like the human immune system, both land-and ocean-based ecosystems have components that fight disease. In the immune system, antibodies stun invading pathogens, and white blood cells devour them. In terrestrial (land-based) ecosystems, birds of prey, like the spotted owls of the U.S. Pacific Northwest, eat rodents that can carry Lyme-disease-infected ticks, hantavirus, and bubonic plague. In marine (ocean-based) ecosystems, baleen whales and oysters filter-feed on algae and animal plankton, preventing the plankton from overgrowing into harmful algal blooms.

Second, just as a host is influenced by its environment, every ecosystem is influenced by the global environment. This includes the conditions in the lower atmosphere (troposphere), the upper atmosphere (stratosphere), the biosphere, the ice cover (cryosphere), and the world ocean. Even disregarding climate change, humans have made huge changes to the global environment. By using chlorofluorocarbons and related chemicals in our air conditioners and antiperspirants, we’ve damaged the ozone layer in the stratosphere that protects all land-based life from the sun’s damaging ultraviolet rays.

By overfishing, we’ve decimated once-abundant populations of cod and many other species. By unwittingly releasing dangerous synthetic chemicals that act like hormones in animal bodies, we’ve altered the fate of countless species. The list of disturbances goes on. Climate change portends larger changes by affecting the viability of entire ecosystems. Persistent warming can kill off vegetation, turning grasslands into deserts, as it did when a changing climate transformed the Sudanese Sahara 5,500 years ago from a semiarid grassland suitable for grazing sheep to the bone dry desert it is today.

Warming seas make it harder for coral to reproduce, contributing to the coral bleaching events that are destroying reefs worldwide. Warmer and more variable weather can enable insects, including crop pests, finally, the analogy works because human civilization is disrupting the functioning of the ecosystems that supply us with healthy food, clean air, and pure water, just as pathogenic microbes disrupt the functioning of the host’s body, upon whom they rely for life support.

Human civilizations are also disrupting the global environment. The overlapping circles of this Venn diagram represent these interactions. All of our social structures—our economy, our legal system, our energy system—influence both ecosystems and the global environment. That means that the agent in this analogy is usThis Venn diagram is useful in part because it offers an easy-to-grasp framework that illustrates how complex real-world systems work.

Conditions in a host, whether human or ecosystem, must be conducive for an agent, be it microbe or human society, to flourish. And when conditions are such that the agent, host, and environment are all disturbed, a small problem can turn into a big one. A cold virus invading the throat of an overstressed person can cause days of sickness; a wildlife disease invading a disturbed and weakened ecosystem can spread and become an epidemic.

Earth, internal structure of Earthquakes and volcanoes

2020-09-30T09:28:00.005-07:00

Earth, the internal structure of Earthquakes, and volcanoes are manifestations of processes at work deep within Earth. These processes in turn are evidence of Earth’s internal structure, models of which have undergone considerable evolution in the 20th century. On a large scale, the internal features of Earth may be categorized as follows:

1. Core. This is the innermost layer of Earth, a dense, approximately spherical mass of very hot rock that accounts for roughly one-third of the planet’s mass and one-sixth of its volume. The core is divided into a solid inner core and a liquid outer layer.

2. Mantle. The mantle, the thick layer of rock surrounding the core, contains about two-thirds of Earth’s mass and more than four-fifths of its volume. An outer layer of the mantle is called the asthenosphere and is involved closely with driving plate tectonics. There is also a division within the upper and lower mantle based on mineral structure.

3. Crust. The crust, or surface layer, of Earth, is very thin compared to the mantle and core (five to 80 miles [8 to 129 km] thick) and accounts for only a tiny fraction of Earth’s total mass and volume. The crust floats on the asthenosphere by a process called isostasy, in which the relatively lightweight rocks of the crust are supported by the denser rocks below. The crust is divided into several individuals, rigid plates that interact with one another through various processes, generating earthquakes and volcanic activity. The crust contains many faults that produce numerous earthquakes.

Earthflow - an earthflow is a type of mass movement. It is a viscous flow of saturated, fine-grained materials that move downslope at speeds ranging from barely perceptible up to about 10 miles per hour (about 0.1 m/sec). Materials susceptible to earthflow include clay, fine sand and silt, and fine-grained pyroclastic material (primarily ash).

The velocity and distance of the earthflow are controlled by water content, with faster and longer movements through higher water content. Some earth flows may continue to move for years. Earth flows normally begin when the water content increases either through rain, melting (normal heating or volcanic eruption), or liquefaction during an earthquake. Shaking from an earthquake may also initiate flow in saturated soil. The flows tend to bulge in the middle as they move, which in turn channels more fluid to the middle while the edges dry out. Earth flows will stop moving when the water content drops.

Earthquake hazard. An earthquake hazard is considered to be any of the damaging effects and processes of an earthquake that may affect the normal activities of people. Examples of earthquake hazards include surface faulting, ground shaking, landslides, liquefaction, slumping, fissures, avalanches, tsunamis, and seiches, among others.

Earthquake light - This phenomenon consists of a peculiar glow that sometimes is reportedly seen in the sky during earthquakes. What causes earthquake light is uncertain, but it has been suggested that methane escaping from underground during earthquakes is ignited somehow and burns near the surface, giving off light.

Earthquake risk - Earthquake risk is the probable damage to buildings, roads, services, and other infrastructure and the number of people that are expected to be killed or injured during an earthquake of a size in a location. Earthquake risk is a probabilistic model for a specific seismic event. It varies considerably with each area depending upon population and emergency readiness.

Earthquake swarm - Many earthquakes preceding a volcanic eruption. As magma moves upward in the crust, it pushes rock out of the way. It forces open cracks in the rock. Each break results in a small earthquake. These earthquakes are typical of magnitudes of 4 or less, but some larger earthquakes are possible. There can be hundreds to thousands of earthquakes in such swarms. volcanologists use this kind of seismic activity to predict eruptions. The correlation is not foolproof. Many earthquake swarms do not foretell a coming eruption but rather just the movement of magma.

Consequences of Deterioration in the System of Nature

2020-05-18T01:19:00.000-07:00

The world's food production, clean drinking water, basic living facilities, and public health resources are declining and the population is growing. So, further burdening the families of the poor and creating social evils. In this regard, it has been mentioned in most of the reports where the average growth rate of the population is high and the resources are decreasing.

The people of developing countries are suffering from apathy, frustration, and chaos; they are not willing to accept any scientific, logical argument. Economic backwardness, mental discomfort, and lack of civic sense have plunged them further into poverty. The more problems from which the only way out is quality education, awareness-raising, and a tradition of dialogue, but how can that be? This question is stuck in its place.

All reports, surveys and press releases released by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) express deep concern over current ground conditions, climate change, and the spread of epidemics. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says that despite international agreements, including those reached the 195-nation summit in Paris, the results are far from certain. Climate change is causing sea levels, global warming, epidemics, droughts, floods, and hurricanes to increase. It has found China's private companies are at the forefront of the relentless use of natural fuels.

Many times the increase in cars is a sign of China's growth, but the rapid increase in carbon emissions is polluting the air. Car manufacturers are focusing more on the production of petrol and diesel cars. Countries and multinational corporations are in a race to make the most of modern cars, and modern-day advertising is driving people crazy.

Most of the leading car companies in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Japan and South Korea are working to develop alternative energy-efficient cars that can run on large solar and electric batteries. On the other hand, a strange and important issue Russia currently has the world's largest oil and natural gas reserves. Then there is Saudi Arabia, which is the largest exporter of oil. Iran, Qatar, Venezuela, Kuwait, and the Gulf states, which have spent on oil sales, are worried that the United States, the largest consumer, and buyer of oil, is now itself.

It produces the world's second-largest oil reserves. In such a situation, oil prices are falling and production is being reduced. There is also fierce competition, as evidenced by the recent dispute between Russia and Saudi Arabia over oil. Russia is unwilling to accept OPEC terms, while Saudi Arabia is unwilling to accept Russia's terms.

As a result, reconditioned cars from modern developed countries are being sold to less developed countries. In this way, developed countries sell the latest cars to their people instead of old cars have been. In developing countries, old cars are rampant, and oil consumption has increased. This is the contradiction of trade, of the global economy, one for-profit, and the other for loss. Climate change is increasing, and pollution is increasing.

Traffic jams not only spread smoke, density pollution but also noise pollution. We pay less attention to noise pollution while it is very dangerous. The noise of traffic on the road, the awkward sounds of horns, the noise from machines, loud music, and other activities have a very negative effect on our hearing, our mind, and nerves.

The vast majority of urban dwellers suffer from mental and nervous stress and various other ailments. People in developing countries suffer from many deadly diseases, viruses, and social problems. The biggest problem of these countries is population growth which is not noticed by the governments, society, or the elites.

Rural people do not even consider this a problem. Lack of education, lack of awareness, and some religious superstitions have made the people numb. The people of developing countries are suffering from apathy, frustration, and chaos; they are not willing to accept any scientific, logical argument.

Economic backwardness, mental discomfort, and lack of civics have plunged them further into poverty and problems. Therefore, the only way out of which is quality education and awareness-raising and a tradition of dialogue. But how is that? This question is stuck in its place.

Top priorities in the United Nations Environment Program, reduction of pollution, and social stability in societies are eradication of poverty and hunger, improvement of public health, universal education, and equal rights for women, clean drinking water.

Providing water and promoting the use of alternative energy instead of natural fuels for pollution-free societies, innovating industrial development, eliminating economic inequalities, continuing the struggle for justice and civil rights, and eliminating backwardness in societies.

UN environmentalists say the only way to solve these problems is through a public struggle. But instead of a public struggle, people can use modern means of communication, such as mobile phones, the Internet, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc., even without taking to the streets. In recent days, this work has been carried out by school children in more than 30 countries.

Such recipes are necessary. The people will benefit from it because the problem is not small. Further the entire planet and all kinds of life on it, of which the man is the foremost. The fact is that changes in the natural environment do not happen in months or years but in decades and centuries.

The recent conference of the United Nations Environment Program was attended by more than 500 environmentalists, geologists and geographers who have made it clear in their report that despite all the efforts and report so far, no practical steps have been taken.

Earth's temperature is rising, sea levels are rising, and large glaciers of ice are melting into the oceans in Greenland, the Himalayas, and Antarctica. River water is receding. Due to which seawater is entering the Delta areas which are badly affecting the agriculture and society of the Delta areas.

Due to this, various epidemics are spreading in these areas. Instead of disposing of industrial, chemical and acidic wastes properly, they are being dumped in seas, lakes, and canals, which are having severe adverse effects. This water is irrigating fields and vegetable farms in most areas. This is giving rise to various diseases.

Experts have repeatedly warned governments and responsible industrial circles not to play with precious human lives. But it is still going on. Global environmentalists and scholars have complained to the heads of different countries that they are talking about taking the necessary steps to reduce pollution and improve the environment, but in practice what is coming out. The problem is that the modern capitalist system, the retail and monopoly system, has established its monopoly through corporations.

The world has been transformed into a commercial market where everything comes from money. More exploitation is taking place in the name of globalization, even forcing people to buy and drink water. A monopoly has been established on every important thing.

Everything is being taken over by a powerful and organized mafia. The big shopping malls are sitting on monopolies. People are wasting money in the desert of dazzling lights. Gradually small capitalists, traders, and shopkeepers are disappearing.

Construction companies around the world have united; they have joined hands with the bureaucracy of countries through corruption. Black money launderers, tax evaders and those who make money through illicit means are supporting the mafia by investing in such businesses. The land, the sea, the drinking water, the grain markets, the foodstuffs, the pharmacies, and even the pharmacies are under siege. Honest politicians, judges, administrative officers, teachers, and ordinary citizens are the victims of gossip.

European educators complained at a recent meeting at the University of Paris that the vast majority of students from developing countries who come here for higher education have little emphasis on their subjects. There is no awareness. This is because education in developing countries is also being taken over by corrupt people called plant mafia.

A large number of students have become accustomed to shortcuts. In most universities, teachers teach students through photocopy notices. Universities are teaching old textbooks. In fact, quality education is not provided in primary and high schools in these countries.

Mafia occupation of the sea is said to be such that in most countries, where there are beaches, a significant portion of their population earns their living by fishing from the sea, which is now a concern. Because it has traditional fishing nets and other traditional equipment from which they have been fishing in their areas for years, but it is said that there are big modern trawlers of companies from developed countries who have all the modern equipment.

And there are self-employed equipment and experts who in a short period of time can catch a large part of the fish that weighs in tons. In such a situation, the fishermen of poor countries are becoming poorer and unemployed, but the mafia is doing its job.

Leading environmentalists from around the world, including John Jobber and Aldoliput, have stated in a recent research report that a strong lobby has emerged in the United States since Donald Trump became president, which has announced.

The lobby is also backed by the leading American newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. In fact, President Trump and a large lobby in the Republican Party, which owns oil companies, natural coal mines, and motorized companies. They are convincing the public that by rejecting global warming and developing a new ideology.

Hurricanes keep coming to the United States, blizzards on the rise around the world, paralyzing life in many cities and affected areas for days, closing roads, making it difficult for trains to run and power outages in some cities. The system gets wetter now because the world is entering the Ice Age According to this lobby.

The weather has been changing since the earth came into being. Once upon a time, it was a ball of fire. Oceans of fire used to boil. Then, centuries later, when the earth cooled down, the ice froze. And it was covered with snow. Then gradually, centuries later, the ice melted and turned into water, becoming oceans, mountains, and life.

These people claim that this earth is going to become a world of ice again and a time will come when the earth will be completely covered with ice, and the seas will freeze. This lobby's ice theory has been rejected by world leaders and thousands of experts because they believe that US President Donald Trump is a businessman, so he rejected the Paris Agreement in support of his big business friends and circles.

Separated, they want to maximize the use and sale of US oil, coal, and natural gas, as they do not participate in or support any agreement to curb the use of natural fuels. The recent incident in this regard is obvious to all. "It's not a dangerous virus, it's just a flu-like virus, it doesn't have to be confined to the house, you all have to work," he said.

When bad news started coming from one city after another, President Trump became confused and, as usual, started venting his anger on China and sometimes on Narendra Modi. China, India, Brazil, and other countries are also benefiting from the US environmental policy and are making good use of natural coal and diesel.

Thus, pollution control measures are not being implemented, which is of further concern to experts. Scientists, environmentalists, and geologists have repeatedly warned African and some Asian countries to take meaningful measures to curb population growth as the pace of population growth is severely affecting the planet's natural environment.

The world's food production, clean drinking water, basic living facilities, and public health resources are declining and the population is growing, further burdening the families of the poor and creating social evils. In this regard, Pakistan has been mentioned in most of the reports where the average growth rate of the population is high and the resources are declining.

For example, clean drinking water is becoming scarce; people have to buy water to drink. The poor are deprived of it. This is just the fault of the governments. The world's seawater is being used for purification. In the northern part of Pakistan, there are the world's largest glaciers, five rivers flow on our land.

It rains every year, floods come and wreak havoc in the sea. But governments have not built small dams, artificial lakes. If an artificial lake is built in the Cholistan, a large area can be irrigated and water scarcity can be reduced. The practice of building small dams is becoming common in the world and the idea of building big dams has been rejected.

Therefore, in Pakistan, whose population is growing, it is necessary to build small dams. Monsoon rains have been increasing in Pakistan for a long time. Floods are coming from torrential rains. This is obvious to all, but unseen forces remain an obstacle in building dams. This is beyond comprehension. Water will become a major issue for nations in the years to come.

With regard to the global environment and climate change, we cannot deny the fact that man will have to bear the brunt of the distortions in the balance of nature. Man, intoxicated with gold, lust, greed, and power, has not only destroyed the society but has also severely damaged the natural system.

Man claims that he has reached many stages of development today and is now fulfilling the mission of conquering the universe. But has the planet established a corner that is environmentally friendly and free from all kinds of pollution and viral diseases? No, the whole world is polluted.

The United Nations Environment Program said in its annual report last year that Hurricane Sandy, which hit North America last year, was caused by a two-degree rise in temperature in the Atlantic Ocean. In this regard, most of the world's scientists who have been researching the marine environment, believe that climate change is happening in the world every thirty years, but this time the last two highs are changing the marine environment.

They are out of the ordinary. Recent maritime research, for example, has shown that waves are being recorded in the central part of the Indian Ocean. Professor Paul Kinch, who is researching the marine environment at a Canadian university, says the oceans could pose a major threat to the world.

He says modern research has shown that sea levels are gradually changing. Eighty years from now, the sea level is expected to rise eight feet in 2100 and to 50 feet in 2300. Experts believe that the waves in the middle of the Indian Ocean are signaling a major catastrophe in the near future, which poses a serious threat to all coastal cities and islands in the Indian Ocean.

Experts are more concerned about the rising sea level. The ocean, which is also associated with the South Pole, is heavier and is being affected by melting glaciers in the Arctic ice region. In addition, changes in the Atlantic Ocean, which lies between the North and the South, could affect the United States and its surrounding islands. In light of this sea-level change, a lobby of US experts, in support of President Trump, has likened global warming to global cooling.

Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier Might Be Unstable

2018-05-01T23:34:00.000-07:00

•Eight research teams will be part of a massive five-year project to study an Antarctic glacier that's in rapid retreat.
•If it happens, the Thwaites Glacier's collapse would cause a dramatic rise in sea levels.
•The researchers are hoping to find out how dire the situation is, and what additional impacts this collapse would have.

•They'll be focused on the Thwaites Glacier, located on the western side of Antarctica. It has lost a huge amount of ice recently – enough to contribute about 4 percent of overall sea level rise – and a complete collapse of the Florida-sized glacier would push sea levels up as much as 3 feet, according to Public Radio International.

The new study will be an attempt to learn more about the glacier in hopes that it'll lead to better modeling and a more exact projection of what might happen in the future.

"Really, the whole program is about understanding that extra uncertainty attached to sea level rise and doing what we can to remove it, allowing people to protect their coastal environments and to prepare property to protect their populations," David Vaughan, the director of science at the British Antarctic Survey,

One reason why we know relatively little about Thwaites is because few researchers have made expeditions to West Antarctica to study it since the first trip in the 1950s, PRI also said. The glacier is some 1,000 miles from the closest research station, and weather conditions are not friendly to those who venture into the region, the report added.

But this time, eight research teams will join together for the project, and they plan to study everything from the bedrock under the ice sheet to the climate above it in hopes of finding out as much as they can about the glacier, PRI added. They want to know the history of this ice sheet so they can understand how it has behaved in the past, and if there's any hope to save it during the rapid retreat period currently taking place.

"There is still a question in my view as to whether Thwaites has actually entered an irreversible retreat," Vaughan told BBC.com. "It assumes the melt rates we see today continue into the future and that's not guaranteed. Thwaites is clearly on the verge of an irreversible retreat, but to be sure we need 10 years more data."

About 100 scientists will be sent to West Antarctica as part of the study, according to BBC.com. It'll be the biggest collaboration between U.S. and U.K. scientists in Antarctica in at least 70 years, the report added.

The study will cost about $27.5 million, according to Newser.

Final Warning by Stephen Hawkings

2018-03-19T00:18:00.003-07:00

Stephen Hawking's final warning to humanity by legendary physicist believed we must leave Earth in the next 200 years or face EXTINCTION. Humans must leave Earth in the next 200 years if we want to survive. That was the stark warning issued by Professor Stephen Hawking in the months before his death today at the age of 76. The legendary physicists believed that life on Earth could be wiped out by a disaster such as an asteroid strike, AI or an alien invasion. He also warned over-population, human aggression and climate change could cause humanity to self-destruct. He believed, if our species had any hope of survival, future generations would need to forge a new life in space.

One of Hawking's main fears for the planet was global warming. 'Our physical resources are being drained, at an alarming rate. We have given our planet the disastrous gift of climate change,' Hawking warned in July. Moreover, rising temperatures and reduction of the polar ice caps, deforestation, and decimation of animal species. We can be an ignorant, unthinking lot.' Hawking said that Earth will one day look like the 460°C (860°F) planet Venus if we don't cut greenhouse gas emissions. Next time you meet a climate change denier, tell them to take a trip to Venus. I will pay the fare,' Hawking quipped. The physicist also believed President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement has doomed our planet. He warned Trump's decision would cause avoidable damage to our 'beautiful planet' for generations to come. 'We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible,' the celebrated scientist told BBC last year.

If global warming doesn't wipe us out, Hawking believed Earth would be destroyed by an asteroid strike. 'This is not science fiction. It is guaranteed by the laws of physics and probability,' he said. 'To stay risks being annihilated. 'Spreading out into space will completely change the future of humanity. It may also determine whether we have any future at all.' Hawking was working with Russian billionaire Yuri Milner's Breakthrough Starshot project to send a fleet of tiny 'nanocraft' carrying light sails on a four light-year journey to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to Earth. 'If we succeed we will send a probe to Alpha Centauri within the lifetime of some of you alive today,' he said. Astronomers estimate that there is a reasonable chance of an Earth-like planet existing in the 'habitable zones' of Alpha Centauri's three-star system. 'It is clear we are entering a new space age. We are standing at the threshold of a new era', said Hawking. 'Human colonisation and other planets is no longer science fiction, it can be science fact.'

Hawking believed that In the long run the human race should not have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. 'I just hope we can avoid dropping the basket until then', he said. AI could replace humans. Hawking claimed that AI will soon reach a level where it will be a 'new form of life that will outperform humans.' He even went so far as to say that AI may replace humans altogether, although he didn't specify a timeline for his predictions. The chilling comments during a recent interview with Wired. He said: 'The genie is out of the bottle. I fear that AI may replace humans altogether.

Yellowstone Supervolcano May Erupt Quickly

2017-10-13T02:58:00.000-07:00

The supervolcano lie in wait for beneath Yellowstone National Park could be getting ready to explode, an eruption that could be shattering to life on Earth. It could take as little as a human lifetime for a dormant volcano to wake up and make itself for an immense eruption, scientists say. As far as Yellowstone, such super-eruption last happened more than 600,000 years ago, after magma filled the empty chambers below the Earth’s surface some decades before it blew. Earlier it was supposed that this build up took thousands of years, but the new research suggests the timeframe was much tighter. The Yellowstone supervolcano, if it erupts, likely transforms the Earth’s weather into a volcanic winter. Even more concerning is the fact that we might not be given enough time to prepare for such a disaster. The latest findings were the result of a study carried out by a team from Arizona State University.

Researchers believed, such Yellowstone supervolcano is capable of unleashing abundant ash and rock into hundreds of cubic miles at one time into an eruption radius large enough to cover most of the united states in a thick fog and affect the environment of the entire planet. However, it’s not the only supervolcano there is. In Italy the “Campi Flegrei” is another example of one of these natural monsters that could be devastating if it were to erupt. In 1538, the Campi Flegrei, last blew, has experienced earthquakes and ground uplifting that has made room for magma to build up beneath it. The top level indicates that an eruption released 250 cubic miles of magma.

However, it is predicting a volcanic eruption is difficult, though volcanologists are trying to crack the code. This latest research, the scientists found during an analysis of material that after magma filled up the area beneath Yellowstone all those thousands of years ago, temperatures and other conditions changed quickly, over the course of just decades, leading to an eruption. Therefore, it is really shocking how little time is required to take a volcanic system from being quiet and sitting there to the edge of an eruption. Moreover in the recent times, Yellowstone has experienced ground uplifting, a major sign of activity that could possibly warn of an eruption because of the magma buildup that takes place beneath the swelling surface.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the last eruption at Yellowstone was 640,000 years ago. Yellowstone National Park doesn’t hold a classic image of a volcano, with a mountain looming high in the sky, but it is still home to a gigantic volcano structure. The most of park is within the Yellowstone caldera, the crater created when the magma from the supervolcano erupted and the Earth’s crust collapsed into the empty space it left behind. Thus, some of its main attractions, including the geyser Old Faithful and the Grand Prismatic Spring are signs of the site’s volcanic activity. However, according to new research, it would only take decades, considerably reducing the expected preparation time that we would have for the disaster.

NASA Dramatic Photographs Shows How Our Planet Earth is Changing Over the Time

2016-12-07T22:36:00.002-08:00

The below incredible NASA images showing incredible changes have been observed over 100 years or so. If you compare the images, you will know the difference clearly. These pictures are can found on NASA website. The human activities are changing the entire world into cemented skyscrapers and destroying natural resources. The ever changing technologies are playing a big part in increasing human greediness to control natural resources to make a big money. This is incredible stuff and everyone would feel sadness of losing planet earth. No one sure, where would we stand after 100 years? Can our generation see any kind of natural resources or not? Source: Charismatic Planet

The world's hottest day EVER is recorded in Kuwait as temperature soars to 54C

2016-07-27T03:56:00.001-07:00

Temperatures in Kuwait reached 54C this week, making Thursday the hottest day EVER recorded. The blistering temperature was recorded in Mitribah, Kuwait, on Thursday. And yesterday, Iraq was nearly as hot, as the mercury soared to 53.9C (129.0 degrees Fahrenheit). Weather forecaster Nagham Mohammed expected temperatures Saturday to hover around 49 degrees Celsius (120.2 Fahrenheit) in Basra and to decline in the coming days. Mohammed added that temperatures in Baghdad are expected to reach 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit). And weather historian, Christopher C. Burt said the temperatures made them the hottest "ever reliably measured on Earth". On Wednesday, temperatures soared up to 51C (123.8 Fahrenheit) in Baghdad and as much as 53C (127.4 Fahrenheit) in Basra.

What You Need to Know About the World's Water Wars

2016-07-19T03:30:00.002-07:00

Underground water is being pumped so aggressively around the globe that land is sinking, civil wars are being waged, and agriculture is being transformed. In some neighborhoods, the ground is giving way at a rate of four inches a year as water in the giant aquifer below it is pumped.

The groundwater has been so depleted that China’s capital city, home to more than 20 million people, could face serious disruptions in its rail system, roadways, and building foundations, an international team of scientists concluded earlier this year. Beijing, despite tapping into the gigantic North China Plain aquifer, is the world’s fifth most water-stressed city and its water problems are likely to get even worse.

Beijing isn’t the only place experiencing subsidence, or sinking, as soil collapses into space created as groundwater is depleted. Parts of Shanghai, Mexico City, and other cities are sinking, too. Sections of California’s Central Valley have dropped by a foot, and in some localized areas, by as much as 28 feet.

Around the world, alarms are being sounded about the depletion of underground water supplies. The United Nations predicts a global shortfall in water by 2030. About 30 percent of the planet’s available freshwater is in the aquifers that underlie every continent.

More than two-thirds of the groundwater consumed around the world irrigates agriculture, while the rest supplies drinking water to cities. These aquifers long have served as a backup to carry regions and countries through droughts and warm winters lacking enough snowmelt to replenish rivers and streams. Now, the world’s largest underground water reserves in Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas are under stress. Many of them are being drawn down at unsustainable rates. Nearly two billion people rely on groundwater that is considered under threat.

Richard Damania, a lead economist at the World Bank, predicts that without adequate water supplies, economic growth in the most stressed parts of the world could decline by six percent of GDP. His findings conclude that the most severe impacts of climate change will deplete water supplies.

“If you are in a dry area, you are going to get a lot less rainfall. Run-off is declining,” he says. “People are turning to groundwater in a very, very big way.”

But few things are more difficult to control than groundwater pumping, Damania says. In the United States, farmers are withdrawing water at unsustainable rates from the High Plains, or Ogallala Aquifer, even though they have been aware of the threat for six decades.

“What you have in developing countries is a large number of small farmers pumping. Given that these guys are earning so little, there is very little you can do to control it,” Damania says. “And you are, literally, in a race to the bottom.”Over the past three decades, Saudi Arabia has been drilling for a resource more precious than oil. Engineers and farmers have tapped hidden reserves of water to grow grains, fruits, and vegetables in the one of the driest places in the world. They are tapping into the aquifer at unsustainable rates. On these NASA satellite images of the Wadi As-Sirhan Basin, green indicates crops, contrasting with the pink and yellow of dry, barren land.

As regions and nations run short of water, Damania says, economic growth will decline and food prices will spike, raising the risk of violent conflict and waves of large migrations. Unrest in Yemen, which heavily taps into groundwater and which experienced water riots in 2009, is rooted in a water crisis. Experts say water scarcity also helped destabilize Syria and launch its civil war. Jordan, which relies on aquifers as its only source of water, is even more water-stressed now that more than a half-million Syrian refugees arrived.

Jay Famiglietti, lead scientist on a 2015 study using NASA satellites to record changes in the world’s 37 largest aquifers, says that the ones under the greatest threat are in the most heavily populated areas.

"Without sustainable groundwater reserves, global security is at far greater risk,” he says. “As the dry parts are getting drier, we will rely on groundwater even more heavily. The implications are just staggering and really need to be discussed at the international level.”

Below are answers to your key questions.

Where is groundwater the most threatened?

The most over-stressed is the Arabian Aquifer System, which supplies water to 60 million people in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Indus Basin aquifer in northwest India and Pakistan is the second-most threatened, and the Murzuk-Djado Basin in northern Africa the third.

How did these giant basins become so depleted?

Drought, bad management of pumping, leaky pipes in big-city municipal water systems, aging infrastructure, inadequate technology, population growth, and the demand for more food production all put increasing demand on pumping more groundwater. Flood irrigation, which is inefficient, remains the dominant irrigation method worldwide. In India, the world’s largest consumer of groundwater, the government subsidizes electricity – an incentive to farmers to keep pumping.

How has irrigation changed farming?

Irrigation has enabled water-intensive crops to be grown in dry places, which in turn created local economies that are now difficult to undo. These include sugar cane and rice in India, winter wheat in China, and corn in the southern High Plains of North America. Aquaculture has boomed in the land-locked Ararat Basin, which lies along the border between Armenia and Turkey. Groundwater is cold enough to raise cold-water fish, such as trout and sturgeon. In less than two decades, the aquifer there has been drawn down so severely for fish ponds that municipal water supplies in more than two dozen communities are now threatened.

How much water remains?

More is known about oil reserves than water. Calculating what remains in aquifers is extraordinarily difficult. In 2015, scientists at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada concluded that less than six percent of groundwater above one-and-a-half miles (two kilometers) in the Earth’s landmass is renewable within a human lifetime. But other hydrologists caution that measurements of stores can mislead. More important is how the water is distributed throughout the aquifer. When water levels drop below to 50 feet or less, it is often not economically practical to pump water to the surface, and much of that water is brackish or contains so many minerals that it is unusable.

Is there any good news?

Depleted groundwater is a slow-speed crisis, scientists say, so there's time to develop new technologies and water efficiencies. In Western Australia, desalinated water has been injected to recharge the large aquifer that Perth, Australia's driest city, taps for drinking water. China is working to regulate pumping. In west Texas, the city of Abernathy is drilling into a deeper aquifer that lies beneath the High Plains aquifer and mixing the two to supplement the municipal water supply. Source: National Geographic

Scientists uncover evidence of prehistoric 'megatsunami

2015-10-04T09:33:00.000-07:00

Scientists have found evidence of an unprecedented “megatsunami” off the Cape Verde Islands that occurred some 70,000 years ago. Caused by sudden volcanic collapse, the 800-foot wave would have engulfed what is now Santiago Island, some thirty miles away. That estimate, which was published today in Science Advances, could prompt scientific community to re-evaluate the threat of catastrophic collapses near coastal communities. When volcanoes collapse, the resulting landslides can cause tsunamis of varying severity. Previous research proposed a gradual model for volcanic breakdown, which would result in multiple smaller waves. But a series of van-sized boulders, found nearly 2,000 feet inland, suggest otherwise. Lead author Ricardo Ramalho noted that the boulders were composed of marine rock, while the surrounding terrain was made of young volcanic rock. These shoreline boulders were most likely deposited by a massive wave, Dr. Ramalho and colleagues argue. They calculated the height of the wave based on the weight of the rocks, many of which weigh several hundred tons. “We were all very surprised by the findings,” Ramalho says, “especially because we found them by chance. When we realized the potential implications of these findings, we were naturally excited (academically speaking). But also respectful of what this represents in terms of hazard.”

Ramalho stresses that, while megatsunamis are devastating, they are also incredibly rare.“These are what we scientists call ‘very low frequency, very high impact events,’” Ramalho says. “Due to their very low frequency, we estimate that the probability for them to happen again is very small. But they may and will happen nevertheless, at some point in time. And since their impact can be absolutely devastating, we need to be vigilant and improve our society’s resilience to their possible occurrence.”

Like most natural disasters, tsunamis cannot be prevented by technology. But there are ways to improve our resilience to them, Ramalho says. Further research, particularly on what triggers flank collapse, could help society to better understand the hazards associated with these events.Meanwhile, improved monitoring networks could provide additional warning time before a collapse. While some of these networks are able to detect volcanic unrest, many aren’t designed to pick up on the ground deformation that occurs prior to flank collapse.But perhaps most importantly, a thorough response plan is essential to minimizing damage in the wake of natural disaster.“We need to start thinking, coolly and rationally, what can be done in terms of disaster risk reduction,” Ramalho says. “How may we respond to such a crisis, and what measures can be taken at short, medium, and long term to increase our society’s resilience to their threat? For example, better territorial and urban planning help in mitigating the effects of natural catastrophes in general, and this would not be an exception – and that can be implemented at any time.

Scientist Expects, Antarctica May Have Hit Highest Temperature on Record

2015-04-02T09:03:00.001-07:00

Experts have measured what is expected the highest temperature ever on Antarctica: 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit (17.5 Celsius). They have made measurements at Argentina's Esperanza Base, on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, according to the meteorological website Weather Underground. The preceding hottest recognized temperature on the Antarctica was 62.8°F (17.1°C), recorded at Esperanza Base on April 24, 1961. The Weather Underground called last week's temperatures a remarkable heat wave, though they happened during the end of the austral summer, when Antarctic temperatures are naturally highest. The temperature has yet to be certified as an official record for the continent by the WMO (World Meteorological Organization). Therefore it is hard to draw much conclusion from a single temperature record, cautions Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. Last year Antarctica also logged a record cold temperature.

What are more imperative are the long-term trends, says Schmidt. And when it comes to Antarctica, he points out, the past few years "have actually been quite complex. The world's ocean has been warming rapidly, absorbing much of the planet's excess heat. The large glaciers around Antarctica that come in contact with the warming water have been melting rapidly. But some other glaciers farther inland on the continent are actually growing. That has not been reasonably explained. The science is mostly intricate because the ozone hole continues to affect the region's climate in ways that aren't well understood. The global circulation of winds and currents remains a test for researchers to grasp. One record warm temperature doesn't cut through all that intricacy. When it comes to the entire planet, the Earth remains on track to warm by an average of at least two degrees C (3.6 degrees F) by the end of the century, experts report, though exactly how much is expected to depend on countries' abilities to lessen emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

Source: National Geographic

Breathtaking! Watch Fiery Lava Spill into Ocean

2012-11-29T09:04:00.001-08:00

Lava overtopped a seaside cliff in Hawaii sending up stunning steam plumes caught on film and in pictures by a camera crew aboard a helicopter. The sluggish stream of molten rock, a sticky form of lava called "pahoehoe," crested the edge around. Paradise Helicopters in Hawaii flew videographers Ann and Mick Kalber over the foaming ocean, capturing the formation of the world's most modern land. The thick lava drops downward, it tears and plops onto cooled rocks below, building 6 meter towers that look like stalagmites. It was truly beautiful at night, you could see them glowing because they were topped with hot lava. It made these very neat-looking towers.

The lava oozes from rift vents on the eastern flank of Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, fed by its Pu'u O'o crater. The molten stream is about 4 to 5 feet wide and travels gradually, advancing only about 1,600 feet in two weeks. The lively lava flows are within the Kahauale'a Natural Area Reserve, which is closed to access and can be viewed only from the air or from Hawaii National Park's Kalapana viewing area. The slow Lava has repeatedly streamed into the ocean from Kilauea's east rift zone since the volcano started erupting Jan. 3, 1983. The last time molten rock from Kilauea met the ocean was in December 2011.

Chasing down the world’s vanishing glaciers

2012-11-22T23:21:00.001-08:00

The melting glacial ice in places similar to the Alps, Greenland and the Himalayas is a spectacular visual document of how our planet's climate is fast changing. The United States based environmental photographer James Balog, it is a vision he has spent over 6 years trying hard to record and preserve. I was really shocked by the changes taking place and sought to find a way to capture what was going on, in the Arctic and glaciers elsewhere around the world. The effect has been a new documentary film, "Chasing Ice," based on 36 time-lapse cameras looking at 16 different glaciers in locations in Alaska, Canada, France, Greenland, Bolivia, Iceland, Nepal, the Rocky Mountains and Switzerland. Each camera has been taking a snap every half-an-hour during daylight, developing almost one million pictures in total. What we have seen has been an absolute shock. I never really projected to see this magnitude of change. Every time we open the backs of these cameras it's like 'wow, is that what's just happened.

He says at one point in the film, he has just removed memory card from camera and saying: "This is a memory of a landscape. A landscape that is now gone and will never be seen again in the history of civilization. It is the Arctic that has attracted most attention in recent years. In September 2012, the ice cap fell to its lowest point on record. Surprising it grows each winter but is retreating further and further every summer, and the summer ice extent has decreased by 13% each decade since the ice was first monitored in 1979. Climate researchers have previously forecasted the Arctic could lose almost all of its ice cover in the summer months by 2100. Though, the current accelerated ice losses have led some to believe that date could come much sooner.

What we are observing is a much more accelerated rate of change, particularly in the last 40 years or so and that has clearly been traced by researchers to the impact of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions into the atmosphere. In the last 100 years, the atmosphere has accumulated 40 percent more carbon dioxide in it than had been seen in the peak over the past one million years. He believes the economic and technological solutions to mitigate the effect of climate change already exist. What we require is a better political and public understanding of the immediacy and reality of these changes. I think that this film can help shift public perceptions by telling people a story that is true and happening now.

Global Warming

2011-05-21T04:38:00.000-07:00

Throughout the long history, Earth has warmed and cooled time and again. Climate has changed when the planet received more or less sunlight due to delicate shifts in its orbit, as the atmosphere or surface changed, or when the Sun’s energy varied. But in the past century, another force has started to manipulate Earth climate: humanity. In the first complete global survey of temperature trends in major lakes, NASA researchers determined Earth largest lakes have warmed during the past 25 years in response to climate change. Researchers Philipp Schneider and Simon Hook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used satellite information to measure the surface temperatures of 167 large lakes worldwide.

They reported an average warming rate of 0.45 degrees Celsius (almost 0.81 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade, with some lakes warming as much as 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade. The warming trend was global, and the greatest boost were in the mid-to high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. Our analysis gives a new, independent data source for assessing the impact of climate change over land around the world," said Philipp Schneider. The results have implications for lake ecosystems, which can be negatively affected by even small water temperature changes.

Small changes in water temperature can result in algal blooms that can make a lake toxic to fish or result in the introduction of non-native species that change the lake natural ecosystem. Scientists have long used air temperature measurements taken near Earth surface to calculate warming trends. More in recent times, scientists have supplemented these measurements with thermal infrared satellite data that can be used to provide a comprehensive, precise view of how surface temperatures are changing worldwide. The NASA researchers used thermal infrared imagery from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and European Space Agency satellites. They are paying attention on summer temperatures (July to September in the Northern Hemisphere and January to March in the Southern Hemisphere) because of the complexity in collecting data in seasons when lakes are ice-covered and/or often hidden by clouds. Only nighttime data were used in the study.

The bodies studied were chosen from a global database of lakes and wetlands based on size (typically at least 500 square kilometers 193 square miles or larger) or other exclusive characteristics of scientific merit. The selected lakes also had to have large surface areas located away from shorelines, so land influences did not interfere with the measurements. Satellite lake data were collected from the point farthest from any shoreline.

The biggest and most consistent area of warming was northern Europe. The warming trend was to some extent weaker in southeastern Europe, around the Black and Caspian seas and Kazakhstan. The trends increased slightly farther east in Siberia, Mongolia and northern China. In North America, trends were slightly higher in the southwest United States than in the Great Lakes region. Global Warming was weaker in the tropics and in the mid-latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. The results were consistent with the predictable changes associated with global warming. The satellite temperature trends largely agreed with trends measured by nine buoys in the Great Lakes, Earth largest group of freshwater lakes in terms of total surface area and volume. The lake temperature trends were also in agreement with independent surface air temperature data from NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. In certain regions, such as the Great Lakes and northern Europe, water bodies appear to be warming more quickly than surrounding air temperature.

What is Global Warming?

The question is what is Global warming? It is unusually brisk increase in Earth’s average surface temperature over the past century primarily due to the greenhouse gases released by people burning fossil fuels.

Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature over the past century primarily due to the greenhouse gases released as people burn fossil fuels. The global average surface temperature rose 0.6 to 0.9 degrees Celsius (1.1 to 1.6° F) between 1906 and 2005, and the rate of temperature increase has nearly doubled in the last 50 years. Temperatures are certain to go up further.

How Does Today’s Earth Warming Compare to Past Climate Change?

Earth has experienced climate change in the past without help from humanity. But the current climatic warming is occurring much more quickly than past warming events.

Why Do Scientists Think Current Warming Isn’t Natural?

In Earth’s history before the Industrial Revolution, Earth’s climate changed due to natural cause’s not linked to human activity. However, these natural causes are still in play today, but their influence is too little or they occur too slowly to explain the rapid warming seen in recent decades.

How Much More Will Earth Warm?

Models forecast that as the world consumes ever more fossil fuel, greenhouse gas concentrations will carry on to rise, and Earth’s average surface temperature will go up with them. Based on plausible emission scenarios, average surface temperatures could increase between 2°C and 6°C by the end of the 21st century. Some of this warming will occur even if future greenhouse gas emissions are abridged, because the Earth system has not yet completely adjusted to environmental changes we have already made.

How Will Earth Respond to Warming Temperatures?

The noteworthy point is the impact of global warming is far greater than just increasing temperatures. Global Warming modifies rainfall patterns, amplifies coastal erosion, lengthens the growing season in some regions, melts ice caps and glaciers, and alters the ranges of some infectious diseases. Some of these changes are already occurring.

Global Warming

Throughout its long history, Earth has warmed and cooled time and again. Climate has changed when the planet received more or less sunlight due to subtle shifts in its orbit, as the atmosphere or surface changed, or when the Sun’s energy varied. But in the past century, another force has started to influence Earth’s climate: humanity

How does this warming compare to previous changes in Earth’s climate? How can we be certain that human-released greenhouse gases are causing the warming? How much more will the Earth warm? How will Earth respond? Answering these questions is perhaps the most significant scientific challenge of our time.

Earth’s natural greenhouse effect

Earth’s temperature starts with the Sun. Approximately 30% of incoming sunlight is reflected back into space by bright surfaces like clouds and ice. Of the remaining 70%, most is absorbed by the ocean and land, and the rest is absorbed by the atmosphere. The absorbed solar energy heats our planet.

As the rocks, the air, and the seas warm, they radiate “heat” energy (thermal infrared radiation). From the surface, this energy travels into the atmosphere where much of it is absorbed by water vapor and long-lived greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.

When they absorb the energy radiating from Earth’s surface, microscopic water or greenhouse gas molecules turn into tiny heaters like the bricks in a fireplace, they radiate heat even after the fire goes out. They radiate in all directions. The energy that radiates back toward Earth heats both the lower atmosphere and the surface, enhancing the heating they get from direct sunlight.

This absorption and radiation of heat by the atmosphere—the natural greenhouse effect—is beneficial for life on Earth. If there were no greenhouse effect, the Earth’s average surface temperature would be a very chilly -18°C (0°F) instead of the comfortable 15°C (59°F) that it is today

The enhanced greenhouse effect

What has scientists concerned now is that over the past 250 years, humans have been artificially raising the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at an ever-increasing rate, mostly by burning fossil fuels, but also from cutting down carbon-absorbing forests. Since the Industrial Revolution began in about 1750, carbon dioxide levels have increased nearly 38 percent as of 2009 and methane levels have increased 148 percent. The atmosphere today contains more greenhouse gas molecules, so more of the infrared energy emitted by the surface ends up being absorbed by the atmosphere. Since some of the extra energy from a warmer atmosphere radiates back down to the surface, Earth’s surface temperature rises. By increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases, we are making Earth’s atmosphere a more efficient greenhouse

How is Today’s Warming Different from the Past?

Earth has experienced climate change in the past without help from humanity. We know about past climates because of evidence left in tree rings, layers of ice in glaciers, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. For example, bubbles of air in glacial ice trap tiny samples of Earth’s atmosphere, giving scientists a history of greenhouse gases that stretches back more than 800,000 years. The chemical make-up of the ice provides clues to the average global temperature

Using this ancient evidence, scientists have built a record of Earth’s past climates, or “paleoclimates.” The paleoclimate record combined with global models shows past ice ages as well as periods even warmer than today. But the paleoclimate record also reveals that the current climatic warming is occurring much more rapidly than past warming events.

As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming

Models predict that Earth will warm between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius in the next century. When global warming has happened at various times in the past two million years, it has taken the planet about 5,000 years to warm 5 degrees. The predicted rate of warming for the next century is at least 20 times faster. This rate of change is extremely unusual.

Is Current Warming Natural?

In Earth’s history before the Industrial Revolution, Earth’s climate changed due to natural causes not related to human activity. Most often, global climate has changed because of variations in sunlight. Tiny wobbles in Earth orbit altered when and where sunlight falls on Earth surface. Variations in the Sun itself have alternately increased and decreased the amount of solar energy reaching Earth. Volcanic eruptions have generated particles that reflect sunlight, brightening the planet and cooling the climate. Volcanic activity has also, in the deep past, increased greenhouse gases over millions of years, contributing to episodes of global warming.

These natural causes are still in play today, but their influence is too little or they happen too slowly to explain the rapid warming seen in recent decades. We know this because scientists closely monitor the natural and human activities that influence climate directly with a fleet of satellites and surface instruments.

NASA satellites record a host of vital signs including atmospheric aerosols particles from both natural sources and human activities, such as factories, fires, deserts, and erupting volcanoes, atmospheric gases including the greenhouse gases, energy radiated from Earth surface and the Sun, ocean surface temperature changes, global sea level, the extent of ice sheets, glaciers and sea ice, plant growth, rainfall, cloud structure, and more.

On the others ground, many agencies and nations support networks of weather and climate-monitoring stations that maintain temperature, rainfall, and snow depth records, and buoys that measure surface water and deep ocean temperatures. Taken together, these measurements provide an ever-improving record of both natural events and human activity for the past 150 years.

Scientists put together these measurements into climate models to recreate temperatures recorded over the past 150 years. Climate model simulations that consider only natural solar variability and volcanic aerosols since 1750 omitting observed rise in greenhouse gases are able to fit the observations of global temperatures only up until about 1950. After that point, the decadal trend in global surface warming cannot be explained without including the contribution of the greenhouse gases added by humans.

Though people have had the largest impact on our climate since 1950, natural changes to Earth climate have also occurred in recent times. For example two major volcanic eruptions, El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991, pumped sulfur dioxide gas high into the atmosphere. The gas was converted into tiny particles that lingered for more than a year, reflecting sunlight and shading Earth surface. Temperatures across the globe dipped for two to three years.

Even though volcanoes are active around the world, and continue to emit carbon dioxide as they did in the past, the amount of carbon dioxide they release is tremendously small compared to human emissions. On average, volcanoes emit between 130 and 230 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. By burning fossil fuels, people release in excess of 100 times more, about 26 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere every year. As a result, human activity overshadows any contribution volcanoes may have made to recent global warming.

Changes in the brightness of the Sun can influence the climate from decade to decade, but an increase in solar output falls short as an explanation for recent warming. NASA satellites have been measuring the Sun output since 1978. The total energy the Sun radiates varies over an 11 year cycle. During solar maxima, solar energy is just about 0.1 percent higher on average than it is during solar minima.

Each cycle exhibits slight differences in intensity and duration. As of early 2010, the solar brightness since 2005 has been slightly lower, not higher, than it was during the previous 11 year minimum in solar activity, which occurred in the late 1990s. This implies that the Sun impact between 2005 and 2010 might have been to slightly decrease the warming that greenhouse emissions alone would have caused.

Scientists theorize that there may be a multi-decadal trend in solar output, though if one exists; it has not been observed as yet. Even if the Sun were getting brighter, however, the pattern of warming observed on Earth since 1950 does not match the type of warming the Sun alone would cause. When the Sun’s energy is at its peak, temperatures in both the lower atmosphere and the upper atmosphere become warmer. Instead, observations show the pattern expected from greenhouse gas effects: Earth’s surface and troposphere have warmed, but the stratosphere has cooled.

The stratosphere gets warmer during solar maxima because the ozone layer absorbs ultraviolet light; more ultraviolet light during solar maxima means warmer temperatures. Ozone depletion explains the biggest part of the cooling of the stratosphere over recent decades, but it can’t account for all of it. Increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the troposphere and stratosphere together contribute to cooling in the stratosphere.

How Much More Will Earth Warm?

To additional explore the causes and effects of global warming and to predict future warming; scientists build climate models computer simulations of the climate system. Climate models are designed to simulate the responses and interactions of the oceans and atmosphere, and to account for changes to the land surface, both natural and human-induced. They comply with fundamental laws of physics conservation of energy, mass, and momentum and account for dozens of factors that influence Earth climate.

Though the models are complicated, rigorous tests with real world data hone them into powerful tools that allow scientists to explore our understanding of climate in ways not otherwise possible. By experimenting with the models removing greenhouse gases emitted by the burning of fossil fuels or changing the intensity of the Sun to see how each influences the climate scientists use the models to better understand Earth’s current climate and to predict future climate.

The models predict that as the world consumes ever more fossil fuel, greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to increase, and Earth average surface temperature will increase with them. Based on a range of plausible emission scenarios, average surface temperatures could increase between 2°C and 6°C by the end of the 21st century.

Climate Feedbacks

Greenhouse gases are only part of the story when it comes to global warming. Changes to one part of the climate system can cause additional changes to the way the planet absorbs or reflects energy. These secondary changes are called climate feedbacks, and they could more than double the amount of warming caused by carbon dioxide alone. The main feedbacks are due to snow and ice, water vapor, clouds, and the carbon cycle.

Snow and ice

Perhaps the most well known feedback comes from melting snow and ice in the Northern Hemisphere. Warming temperatures are already melting a growing percentage of Arctic sea ice, exposing dark ocean water during the perpetual sunlight of summer. Snow cover on land is also dwindling in many areas. In the absence of snow and ice, these areas go from having bright, sunlight-reflecting surfaces that cool the planet to having dark, sunlight-absorbing surfaces that bring more energy into the Earth system and cause more warming.

Water Vapor

The largest feedback is water vapor. Water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas. In fact, because of its abundance in the atmosphere, water vapor causes about two-thirds of greenhouse warming, a key factor in keeping temperatures in the habitable range on Earth. But as temperatures warm, more water vapor evaporates from the surface into the atmosphere, where it can cause temperatures to climb further.

The question that scientists ask is, how much water vapor will be in the atmosphere in a warming world? The atmosphere currently has an average equilibrium or balance between water vapor concentration and temperature. As temperatures warm, the atmosphere becomes capable of containing more water vapor, and so water vapor concentrations go up to regain equilibrium. Will that trend hold as temperatures continue to warm?

The amount of water vapor that enters the atmosphere ultimately determines how much additional warming will occur due to the water vapor feedback. The atmosphere responds quickly to the water vapor feedback. So far, most of the atmosphere has maintained a near constant balance between temperature and water vapor concentration as temperatures have gone up in recent decades. If this trend continues, and many models say that it will, water vapor has the capacity to double the warming caused by carbon dioxide alone.

Clouds

Closely related to the water vapor feedback is the cloud feedback. Clouds cause cooling by reflecting solar energy, but they also cause warming by absorbing infrared energy like greenhouse gases from the surface when they are over areas that are warmer than they are. In our current climate, clouds have a cooling effect overall, but that could change in a warmer environment.

If clouds become brighter, or the geographical extent of bright clouds expands, they will tend to cool Earth’s surface. Clouds can become brighter if more moisture converges in a particular region or if more fine particles enter the air. If fewer bright clouds form, it will contribute to warming from the cloud feedback.

Clouds, like greenhouse gases, also absorb and re-emit infrared energy. Low, warm clouds emit more energy than high, cold clouds. However, in many parts of the world, energy emitted by low clouds can be absorbed by the abundant water vapor above them. Further, low clouds often have nearly the same temperatures as the Earth surface, and so emit similar amounts of infrared energy. In a world without low clouds, the amount of emitted infrared energy escaping to space would not be too different from a world with low clouds.

High cold clouds, however, form in a part of the atmosphere where energy-absorbing water vapor is scarce. These clouds trap absorb energy coming from the lower atmosphere, and emit small energy to space because of their frigid temperatures. In a world with high clouds, a considerable amount of energy that would otherwise escape to space is captured in the atmosphere. As a result, global temperatures are higher than in a world without high clouds.

If warmer temperatures result in a greater amount of high clouds, then less infrared energy will be emitted to space. In other words, more high clouds would enhance the greenhouse effect, reducing the Earth’s capability to cool and causing temperatures to warm.

Scientists aren’t entirely sure where and to what degree clouds will end up amplifying or moderating warming, but most climate models predict a slight overall positive feedback or amplification of warming due to a reduction in low cloud cover. A recent observational study found that fewer low, dense clouds formed over a region in the Pacific Ocean when temperatures warmed, suggesting a positive cloud feedback in this region as the models predicted. Such direct observational evidence is limited, however, and clouds remain the biggest source of uncertainty--apart from human choices to control greenhouse gases—in predicting how much the climate will change.

The Carbon Cycle

Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and warming temperatures are causing changes in the Earth’s natural carbon cycle that also can feedback on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. For now, primarily ocean water, and to some extent ecosystems on land, are taking up about half of our fossil fuel and biomass burning emissions. This behavior slows global warming by decreasing the rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide increase, but that trend may not continue. Warmer ocean waters will hold less dissolved carbon, leaving more in the atmosphere.

About half the carbon dioxide emitted into the air from burning fossil fuels dissolves in the ocean. This map shows the total amount of human-made carbon dioxide in ocean water from the surface to the sea floor. Blue areas have low amounts, while yellow regions are rich in anthropogenic carbon dioxide. High amounts occur where currents carry the carbon-dioxide-rich surface water into the ocean depths.

Solar Variability & Global Warming

During the initial discovery period of global climate change, the magnitude of the influence of the Sun on Earth's climate was not well understood. Since the early 1990s, however, extensive research was put into determining what role, if any; the Sun has in global warming or climate change.

A recent review paper, put together by both solar and climate scientists, details these studies: Solar Influences on Climate. Their bottom line: though the Sun may play some small role, "it is nevertheless much smaller than the estimated radiative forcing due to anthropogenic changes." That is, human activities are the primary factor in global climate change.

Solar irradiance changes have been measured reliably by satellites for only 30 years. These precise observations show changes of a few tenths of a percent that depend on the level of activity in the 11-year solar cycle. Changes over longer periods must be inferred from other sources. Estimates of earlier variations are important for calibrating the climate models. While a component of recent global climate change may have been caused by the increased solar activity of the last solar cycle, that component was very small compared to the effects of additional greenhouse gases. According to a NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies press release, the solar risen do not have the ability to cause large global temperature increases greenhouse gases are indeed playing the dominant role. The effects of global climate change are apparent despite the fact that the Sun is once again less bright during the present solar minimum. Since the last solar minimum of 1996, the Sun's brightness has decreased by 0.02% at visible wavelengths, and 6% at extreme UV wavelengths, representing a 12-year low in solar irradiance, according to this NASA news article (April 1, 2009). 2009: Second Warmest Year on Record; End of Warmest Decade.

For January-June of 2010, the global temperature average was 57.5 degrees Fahrenheit - the warmest first half-year since records began in 1880, though it remains yet to be seen whether the next six months will make this year the warmest on record. Still, according to NOAA, each of the 10 warmest average global temperatures recorded since 1880 have occurred in the last fifteen years.

See The Ocean’s Carbon Balance on the Earth Observatory.

On land, changes in the carbon cycle are more complicated. Under a warmer climate, soils, especially thawing Arctic tundra, could release trapped carbon dioxide or methane to the atmosphere. Increased fire frequency and insect infestations also release more carbon as trees burn or die and decay.

On the other hand, extra carbon dioxide can stimulate plant growth in some ecosystems, allowing these plants to take additional carbon out of the atmosphere. However, this effect may be reduced when plant growth is limited by water, nitrogen, and temperature. This effect may also diminish as carbon dioxide increases to levels that become saturating for photosynthesis. Because of these complications, it is not clear how much additional carbon dioxide plants can take out of the atmosphere and how long they could continue to do so.

The impact of climate change on the land carbon cycle is extremely complex, but on balance, land carbon sinks will become less efficient as plants reach saturation, where they can no longer take up additional carbon dioxide, and other limitations on growth occur, and as land starts to add more carbon to the atmosphere from warming soil, fires, and insect infestations. This will result in a faster increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and more rapid global warming. In some climate models, carbon cycle feedbacks from both land and ocean add more than a degree Celsius to global temperatures by 2100.

Emission Scenarios

Scientists predict the range of likely temperature increase by running many possible future scenarios through climate models. Although some of the uncertainty in climate forecasts comes from imperfect knowledge of climate feedbacks, the most significant source of uncertainty in these predictions is that scientists don’t know what choices people will make to control greenhouse gas emissions.

The higher estimates are made on the assumption that the entire world will continue using more and more fossil fuel per capita, a scenario scientists call “business-as-usual.” More modest estimates come from scenarios in which environmentally friendly technologies such as fuel cells, solar panels, and wind energy replace much of today’s fossil fuel combustion.

It takes decades to centuries for Earth to fully react to increases in greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide, among other greenhouse gases, will remain in the atmosphere long after emissions are reduced, contributing to continuing warming. In addition, as Earth has warmed, much of the excess energy has gone into heating the upper layers of the ocean. Like a hot water bottle on a cold night, the heated ocean will continue warming the lower atmosphere well after greenhouse gases have stopped increasing.

These considerations mean that people won’t immediately see the impact of reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Even if greenhouse gas concentrations stabilized today, the planet would continue to warm by about 0.6°C over the next century because of greenhouses gases already in the atmosphere.

Is the Earth Warming Because of Human Activity or Not

Political speeches have featured greenhouse gases as a central topic. Movies such as The Day After Tomorrow have featured global warming events. People talk about CO2 increases in the atmosphere over their breakfast cereal. Most have an opinion on whether the earth is truly warming over time. Here, an examination of several sides of the issue is given so you can make up your mind. Scientific debate is one of the backbones of research. In fact, one of the main ideas behind any scientific inquiry is a question and then more questions and then experimentation and then more questions. It is a primary part of any investigation.

Skip any step, and the process fails. Ignore data, and the process fails. This seems to be the argument of the scientific community in terms of the so-called global warming debate. Scientists have been repeatedly warning the public that there is truly no debate. Global warming is a fact that is here to stay.

On the other hand, there are those scientists that feel global warming is not as big of a deal as is professed. Since the early part of this century, many factors have added to the debate. Some graphs show warming, some show the earth is cooling. Which is correct?

One problem is the array of graphical data available for analysis. Two people looking at two different graphs may interpret the data differently.

Background

Part of the problem with the global warming debate also seems to be semantics. You say toe-may-toe, I say toe-mahhh-toe. The gray area here is Do humans increase global warming or not? One part scientists agree on is that the earth is warming. Data sets show the increases in temperatures over years. Temperatures will always fluctuate, but the general trend in data is a warming. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have also risen. Scientists agree that data from multiple sources indicates that CO2 levels have risen steadily since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Humans, especially Americans, use more fossil fuels than any other country in the world. Fossil fuels contain carbon and are therefore one of the main culprits in carbon emission into the atmosphere. But carbon isn't the only greenhouse gas Just the most famous.

Other greenhouse gasses are

Water vapor
Methane
Nitrous oxide
Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)
Perfluorocarbons (PFCs)
sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)

How Will Global Warming Change Earth?

The impact of increased surface temperatures is significant in itself. But global warming will have additional, far-reaching effects on the planet. Warming modifies rainfall patterns, amplifies coastal erosion, lengthens the growing season in some regions, melts ice caps and glaciers, and alters the ranges of some infectious diseases. Some of these changes are already occurring.

Global warming will shift major climate patterns, possibly prolonging and intensifying the current drought in the U.S. Southwest. The white ring of bleached rock on the once-red cliffs that hold Lake Powell indicate the drop in water level over the past decade—the result of repeated winters with low snowfall.

Changing Weather

For most places, global warming will result in more frequent hot days and fewer cool days, with the greatest warming occurring over land. Longer, more intense heat waves will become more common. Storms, floods, and droughts will generally be more severe as precipitation patterns change. Hurricanes may increase in intensity due to warmer ocean surface temperatures.

Apart from driving temperatures up, global warming is likely to cause bigger, more destructive storms, leading to an overall increase in precipitation. With some exceptions, the tropics will likely receive less rain as the planet warms, while the Polar Regions will receive more precipitation. White areas indicate that less than two-thirds of the climate models agreed on how precipitation will change. Stippled areas reveal where more than 90 percent of the models agreed.

It is impossible to pin any single unusual weather event on global warming, but emerging evidence suggests that global warming is already influencing the weather. Heat waves, droughts, and intense rain events have increased in frequency during the last 50 years, and human-induced global warming more likely than not contributed to the trend.

Rising Sea Levels

The weather isn’t the only thing global warming will impact: rising sea levels will erode coasts and cause more frequent coastal flooding. Some island nations will disappear. The problem is serious because up to 10% of the world’s population lives in vulnerable areas less than about 30 feet above sea level.

Between 1870 and 2000, the sea level increased by 1.7 millimeters per year on average, for a total sea level rise of 221 millimeters (0.7 feet or 8.7 inches). And the rate of sea level rise is accelerating. Since 1993, NASA satellites have shown that sea levels are rising more rapidly, about 3 millimeters per year, for a total sea level rise of 48 millimeters (0.16 feet or 1.89 inches) between 1993 and 2009.

Sea levels crept up about 20 centimeters (7.9 inches) during the twentieth century. Sea levels are predicted to go up between 18 and 59 cm (7.1 and 23 inches) over the next century, though the increase could be greater if ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica melt more quickly than predicted. Higher sea levels will erode coastlines and cause more frequent flooding.

The (IPCC) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that sea levels will rise between 0.18 and 0.59 meters (0.59 to 1.9 feet) by 2099 as warming sea water expands, and mountain and polar glaciers melt. These sea level change predictions may be underestimates, however, because they do not account for any increases in the rate at which the world’s main ice sheets are melting. As temperatures increase, ice will melt more rapidly. Satellite measurements reveal that the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets are shedding about 125 billion tons of ice per year enough to raise sea levels by 0.35 millimeters (0.01 inches) per year. If the melting accelerates, the increase in sea level could be significantly higher.

Impacting Ecosystems

More importantly, perhaps, global warming is already putting pressure on ecosystems, the plants and animals that co-exist in a particular climate zone, both on land and in the ocean. Warmer temperatures have already shifted the growing season in many parts of the globe. The growing season in parts of the Northern Hemisphere became two weeks longer in the second half of the 20th century. Spring is coming earlier in both hemispheres.

This change in the growing season affects the broader ecosystem. Migrating animals have to start seeking food sources earlier. The shift in seasons may already be causing the lifecycles of pollinators, like bees, to be out of synch with flowering plants and trees. This mismatch can limit the ability of both pollinators and plants to survive and reproduce, which would reduce food availability throughout the food chain.

Warmer temperatures also extend the growing season. This means that plants need more water to keep growing throughout the season or they will dry out, increasing the risk of failed crops and wildfires. Once the growing season ends, shorter, milder winters fail to kill dormant insects, increasing the risk of large, damaging infestations in subsequent seasons.

In some ecosystems, maximum daily temperatures might climb beyond the tolerance of indigenous plant or animal. To survive the extreme temperatures, both marine and land-based plants and animals have started to migrate towards the poles. Those species, and in some cases, entire ecosystems, that cannot quickly migrate or adapt, face extinction. The IPCC estimates that 20-30 percent of plant and animal species will be at risk of extinction if temperatures climb more than 1.5° to 2.5°C.

Impacting People

The changes to weather and ecosystems will also affect people more directly. Hardest hit will be those living in low-lying coastal areas, and residents of poorer countries who do not have the resources to adapt to changes in temperature extremes and water resources. As tropical temperature zones expand, the reach of some infectious diseases, such as malaria, will change. More intense rains and hurricanes and rising sea levels will lead to more severe flooding and potential loss of property and life.

One inevitable consequence of global warming is sea-level rise. In the face of higher sea levels and more intense storms, coastal communities face greater risk of rapid beach erosion from destructive storms like the intense nor’easter of April 2007 that caused this damage.

Hotter summers and more frequent fires will lead to more cases of heat stroke and deaths, and to higher levels of near-surface ozone and smoke, which would cause more ‘code red’ air quality days. Intense droughts can lead to an increase in malnutrition. On a longer time scale, fresh water will become scarcer, especially during the summer, as mountain glaciers disappear, particularly in Asia and parts of North America.

On the flip side, there could be “winners” in a few places. For example, as long as the rise in global average temperature stays below 3 degrees Celsius, some models predict that global food production could increase because of the longer growing season at mid- to high-latitudes, provided adequate water resources are available. The same small change in temperature, however, would reduce food production at lower latitudes, where many countries already face food shortages. On balance, most research suggests that the negative impacts of a changing climate far outweigh the positive impacts. Current civilization—agriculture and population distribution—has developed based on the current climate. The more the climate changes, and the more rapidly it changes, the greater the cost of adaptation.

Ultimately, global warming will impact life on Earth in many ways, but the extent of the change is largely up to us. Scientists have shown that human emissions of greenhouse gases are pushing global temperatures up, and many aspects of climate are responding to the warming in the way that scientists predicted they would. This offers hope. Since people are causing global warming, people can mitigate global warming, if they act in time. Greenhouse gases are long-lived, so the planet will continue to warm and changes will continue to happen far into the future, but the degree to which global warming changes life on Earth depends on our decisions now.