Global Warming

Global Warming and Climate change causes, impacts and mitigation

De: Sivakumaran Sivaramanan

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

According to NASA and IPCC, Global temperature has increased by 1.4 oF since 1880, CO2 levels has reached 400.71 parts per billion, loss of world’s forest cover between the period 2000 and 2012 is 1.5 million square km, reduction of land ice 287 billion metric ton per year, sea level rise is 3.2 mm per year and loss of arctic ice cover at the rate of 13.3% per decade. Increasing risk of irreversible changes due to large scale shift in the climate system such as several sensitive species of ocean corals, aquatic birds, reptiles such as sea turtles and amphibians are facing extinction, failing of crops cause famine in many East African countries, decrease in potable water in Mediterranean and Southern Africa and increasing intensity of extreme events such as forest fires (Australia and Indonesia), flooding(Bangladesh) , storm events (tornadoes and hurricanes in USA), droughts (Sahel region) and deadly heat waves (in India 2015) recorded in many parts of the world. Anthropogenic release of greenhouse gases CO2, CH4, water vapour, N2O, O3, HFCs, PFCs and SF6¬reflects a portion of solar energy back to the earth, this increases the temperature, causes changes in ocean currents, seasonal weather patterns and ultimately changes the climate. Deforestation reduces the CO2 sink and it further enhances the greenhouse effect. Several mitigation methods such as use of alternative green energy sources, reducing the use of fossil fuels, use of greenhouse gas reduction techniques to mitigate the emission. Methods such as carbon capture & carbon sequestration, afforestation, reforestation, protection of existing forest reserves, silviculture and agro forestry are being facilitated by several international, government and non-governmental organizations. Climate change issue can be handled either adapting to the change or disaster risk reduction. UNDP has suggested a three step method to work on Carbon finance consist of removal of barriers to climate friendly technologies, establishing efficient host country procedures for clean development mechanism (CDM) and develop projects via millennium development goal (MDG) carbon facility. An Integrated Territorial Climate Plan (ITCP) was designed for regional governments to plan their activities including financing climate change mitigation process. This paper briefly evaluates anthropocene global climate change and its human solutions.