Increase in Rainfall and Increase in Sea Levels

To maintain the global water evaporation from oceans, worldwide must be balanced by rainfall into the oceans. Earth's atmosphere contains only 0.001 percent of the Earth's water, yet the currents of air carries water vapor over land resulting in precipitation.

Increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, has led to warming at the surface, by nearly 0.6°C (1.0°F) during the twentieth century. It is widely believed that this trend will continue in the twenty-first century, leading to a higher sea-surface temperature, among other factors.

One perceptive consequence of a warmer ocean surface is a large vapor-pressure difference between the sea surface and the adjacent atmosphere. This would enhance the evaporation rate, and hence increase rainfall. For instance, a global warming by 4°C (7.2°F) is expected to increase global precipitation by about 10 percent. Research suggests that the increase is more likely to come as heavy rainfall, rather than as more frequent rainfall.

There are few changes suggested for the evidence in change of hydrologic cycle. First, due to global warming there had been an increase in night-time temperature. Daily minimum temperatures have increased at twice the rate of daytime temperatures since 1950 (roughly 1.0°C versus 0.5°C). This suggests an increase in cloudiness and/or humidity at night, and increased evaporation and cooling during the daytime. (This cooling varies according to body heat evaporating).

Second, satellite data suggest, mean (average) atmospheric water-vapor concentration has increased. This enables storms to generate more rainfall.

Third, amounts of rain have changed in different ways in various regions during the last 80 years, but they generally have increased in the middle and high latitudes, often in excess of 10 percent.

In the United States, annual rainfall has increased by about 10 percent during the twentieth century, on an average. The heaviest rainfall are expected to occur near Polar Regions, for two reasons. One, the warming rate has been and will continue to be the highest there, and warmer air can hold more water vapors. Two, the warming will reduce the extent of sea ice, thereby allowing more evaporation.

There has been decrease in rainfall that has been observed in some regions. In the Northern Hemisphere tropics, especially in Africa, a significant decrease in rainfall has occurred since 1950.  Thereby this region is under intense drought.

Changes in rain events, such as monsoon rains, can be either beneficial or harmful. For instance, decrease in rainfall can cause water shortages, and increase in rainfall can aggravate flooding. The potential impact of global warming by monsoon circulation is unknown. In the tropical Pacific, the sea-surface temperature, evaporation rate and rainfall amounts have all increased.

Finally, water vapor is one of the indicators used to measure the amount of greenhouse gases. Increased cloudiness heats the planet. The clouds are high or dark, as is the cases for most storms the clouds reduce the outgoing long-wave radiation more than the net incoming short-wave radiation.

Drought

Many of us are at times under the assumption that drought is defined as lack of rainfall but the real in core definition of drought is lack of rain over a long period of time. Heat evaporates the small amount of rain. This means rain does occur but it not sufficient enough for the living organisms to survive.

Droughts usually occur in hot dry areas of land. In most cases the area is dry because there is very minimal rainfall. The rain that does fall will be quickly absorbed into the ground. Therefore the land is very dry and not many plants and animals can live in condition as a result to thirst and starvation.

These are some of the major places where drought has occurred in the 90’s: 

Year	Place	Cause	Destruction
1931-1938	Great plains of the USA	Serve wind storms dried out the land and blew the top layer of the soil.	Cars, homes and farms destroyed in dust storms
1982-1983	Australia	No rain for more than one year	60% of Australia sheep and cattle dies
1972-1974	Africa	Decreases rainfall	The countries financial business went down
1976	Britain	It did not rain from June 1975 to September 1976. Drought are very rare in England	Water rationing was greatly needed in the larger cities of Britain

Most droughts tend to occur during summer, as the weather is hot and water is quickly evaporated. Droughts can last for years in most extreme cases. These types of droughts can devastate crops and livestock. This also affects the economy; if a farmer has lost his crop due to drought he will get no money to pay for the next seasonal crop.

Drought has a great effect on the food chain. This reason is supported by the fact, because drought dries the land and makes the conditions unfavorable for plants to survive without water and animals cannot survive without plants, water and other living creatures are very much linked. If drought is really long, measures are taken to help save the water. When a drought is too bad drastic measures such as never washing your car or only having one shower per day are not much fun and can sometimes lead to uncleanly environments which can cause bacterial related diseases and infections. Elderly people have trouble with living in very hot and dry environments.

So drought has its own effect on every one. Drought causes the land to be unhealthy as well as dry it out so much that large cracks in the earth's crust and no plants live within the dry climate it means that plant roots cannot hold the soil together. This is the effect that causes wind erosion.

UNICEF: Somalia suffers from worst drought in a decade...

Landslides

In the Oxford dictionary the definition of landslides is a mass of earth or rock that slides down a mountain or cliff.

Gravity causes the landslide movement. Factors triggering these movements are heavy rainfall, earthquakes, poor constructions practices, erosion, and volcanoes eruptions, etc.  There are two types of landslides; fast and slow.

Mudslides, mudflows, lahars are examples of fast-moving landscapes. Usually caused by heavy rains after volcanic eruption. After volcanic eruption the raise in chemicals caused the sky cloudy and forms the humid atmosphere, therefore resulting in rainfall. During rain, the dust and chemicals raised in the atmosphere are cooled down and causing lahars, mudflows. 

The other form of landslides is slow, causes erosion over a long period of time. Waterfalls erode lands by the continuous flow of water. 

Slow moving landslides don’t cause much affect to human lives and properties. On the other side, fast moving landslides cause a lot of effect to human live as this destruction is caused “suddenly”.  For example, water supplies, fisheries, sewage disposal system, forests dam, and roadways can be affected for a long period of time.

The development of countries after landslides depends on the economic structure of the country – developed or under developed or developing. The negative economic effects of landslides include loss of property, disruption of transportations, roads, medical costs for the injuries, rebuilding infrastructure such as electricity and water supply.

Areas that are prone to landslides include areas where landslides have occurred before; relatively flat areas changed by sudden change in slope. Other most common areas prone to landslides are based on drainage channels and hillsides areas where leach-field infected systems are used.

Case Study on fast-landslide: In July 2010, a heavy rain in Myanmar (Bangladesh) has caused major landslides and floods. This has forced around 10,000 people to move from their homes, 100 of them have died. This disaster has affected the roads and swept away the bridges and houses built on slopes were washed away due to landslides. Many houses and schools were destroyed, shortage in food supply and no electricity supply.

Deforestation

Deforestation is cutting down of trees.  The function of trees are to take in carbon dioxide in the air and give out oxygen for humans to breathe.  Cutting down tree has broken the cycle to breathing. Due to more trees are cut down the industrials pollution is been emitted into the air and causing more carbon dioxide in the air.  This has lead to respiratory health problems. Some of the common issues are asthma. Deforestation has led to erosion due to no production of land from UV rays from the sun. Also, another issues are creating of endangered species due to extremes climate and loss of habitats.

Problems created by the cause of deforestation are:

1.    Desiccation in moist forest soils – As the tropical rain forest is decreased; the canopy leaves have reduced. The moisture in the soil gets quickly evaporated. This causes land to cracks and soil becomes dry.

2.   Dramatic increase in the temperature extremes – Trees provide shades and helps to moderate the temperature of the shaded region. Without the shade the land would get too cold in winters and too hot in summers.

3.   No recycling of water – Moisture weather in the coastal region falls as rain. The water vapor from the ocean gets evaporated into the sky and condenses in the form of water droplets and forms rain. With the cause of deforestation, rainfall cycle has been interrupted because of loss of trees in the forest area.

4.   Less carbon dioxide exchange – Rain forest are important for the exchange of carbon dioxide. By deforestation more heat is trapped in the atmosphere

5.   More Desertification – According to United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in 1977, deforestation is the main cause for desertification.  Sahara Desert has expanded by 100knw. Desertification threatened 35% of the world's land surface and 20% of the world's population.

6.   Soil Erosion – Deforestation has been known for run off of rainfall, therefore rigorous soil erosion.

These reasons explains that cutting down trees for commercial purposes can effect our lifecycles.  

Changed World

Back in 70’s the overall population in the world was low and most of the economic sectors were primary and secondary sectors. There was less knowledge about Global Warming. The awareness of Global Warming has been growing among the people in the late 80’s. The awareness was brought because of increase in population and industrialization. This is resulted in the change of climate. In the olden days, due to less technology and innovations people use to spend more time with family and a reasonable numbers of working hours in farmer/industries. But with gradual increase in technology people have started to become more money -minded and less involved with family relationships and also affecting the atmosphere of the world along with them. Hence, this is the concern for Global Warming.

Below are some of the effects to how the Mother Nature is reacting to the man made changes.

Effects of Global Warming:

1.     Deforestation

2.     Landslides

3.     Drought

4.     Increase in storms & rainfall

5.     Melt of Glacier and Increase in sea level

6.     Heat Waves (Wildfires)

7.     Disease (Malaria and Asthma) - (Graph)

8.     Existence of species - (Graph)

Now I’ll discuss each of these causes individually as we go further in the topic of Global Warming. I’ll give some recent data or case studies on some of the affected countries.

We Know!

What is Global Warming?

The earth’s surface gets heated up due to the raise in the number of industries causing pollution and this has lead to rise in the temperature; increase in the average temperature, this causes Global Warming.

What causes Global Warming?

There are numerous reasons for the cause of Global Warming. The two major reasons for the cause of Global Warming are –

 

1.     Electrical Pollution:  a) Organisms, such as plants and animals get buried under the soil and broken down by bacteria and climatic changes (summer/winter/rain) over a period of time. These organisms then form fossil fuels over a period of time. Burning of fossil fuel creates electricity. Some of these gases are released in the air, called greenhouse gases. The main example of fossil fuel is petroleum.  It is used for electricity and transportation. About 38% of this energy is used by United States.

Some of the daily use electricity products such as turning on the lights, washing or drying cloths, Using of hair dryer, Riding in a car, using an air conditioner, using dish washer and playing video games, etc cause pollution.

Think about how many times during a day do you do some of these and also keeping in mind how many people are doing it on a single day! That sounds to be a lot of pollution going into the air, contributing to greenhouse. Hence it’s advised to consume less amount of energy as much as possible. b) When we throw away garbage, the garbage goes to the landfills. The garbage is sometimes burned; this contributes a large amount of greenhouse gases and making the global warming worse.

2.     Cutting down of trees: As we all know tress breathe in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen, and use sunlight (UV) rays for growth and photosynthesis. By cutting down trees, it’s harder for us to breathe because there is more proportion of carbon dioxide in the air compared to oxygen. Also, fewer trees are making the earth warmer causing drought/famine and sudden weather changes such as hurricane/ el Niño, etc. This means we have to save from trees being cut out for commercial use. We are causing danger for our lives by cutting down more trees in countries like Amazon.

Some parts of the countries in the globe, which are being affected the most, are:

1.     Asia – Bangladesh and India are low-lying land. Raising sea level and increase rainfall is causing a problem.

2.     Africa – Increasing drought causing food shortage.

3.     Australia – Hotter climates causing bush fires that is occurring more frequently.

4.     Pacific and Indonesia – Massive earthquakes and effects of tsunami. Islands of pacific are in the danger; increasing in sea level.

5.     Europe – Greece and Portugal are experiencing wildfires during summer heat.

6.     Latin America - In Amazon, cutting down of trees causing danger of increase hot weather.

7.     North America - Massive storms and rising sea levels causes Hurricanes and Katrina.