Global warming?

Question

i need information on this topic. Anyone know about the causes, effects, consequences, solutions, prevention, definition of global warming? Give me some information on this, thanks!

Answer 1

that's a tough one to get real info on we can tell its happening because we monitor weather patterns however we haven't been doing so long enough to know how natural that is.
we can tell more polar ice melts every year but still don't know enough about climatology to show any definite patterns
as far as gases that we dump into the atmosphere we can only speculate about the amount of damage it does
but we can't deny it has an effect

Answer 2

Boy you asked the right person!

1. Global warming can be the next 'ice age' only with 'heat'

2. Global warming starts from a massive amount of CO2 in the earths atmosphere. Which in turn blocks out the earths rays (good? no) This massive amount of CO2 will then slowly eat away at the earths oZone layer (making it hotter).

3. This is already starting to take effect in a negative way. Within the past 10 months 3 and half feet of the ocean has risen from the arctic ice caps melting away.

4. At this point it'd take 55+ years for the earth to get to it's normal state if we stopped using the 'items' that release CO2 in the atmosphere.

5. If enough ice caps are melted the more methane that will be reduced into the sky from the ice caps. Which then means there could be a massive explosion...

I got plenty more but I think that is enough for you...

Answer 3

Everything you want, with plenty of graphs and pictures, here;

http://profend.com/global-warming/

Here are the basics:

Some gases ("greenhouse gases") let sunlight in, which warms the Earth, and then block that heat from leaving. That's the "greenhouse effect", and it's a natural thing, mostly caused by water vapor.

Man is making excessive amounts of greenhouse gases, mostly by burning fossil fuels. That causes the delicate natural balance to go out of whack and the Earth warms. That's global warming.

It won't be a Hollywood movie style disaster. Gradually coastal areas will flood and agriculture will be damaged. But it will be very bad. Rich countries will cope, but it will take huge amounts of money. In poor countries many people will die of starvation, but not all of them.

Most scientists say, in 20-50 years. But we need to start right now to fix it, fixing it will take even longer than that.

Really good website for more information here:

http://profend.com/global-warming/

Lots of numerical scientific data proving it real here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

Proof that most scientists think it's real and mostly caused by us here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

Answer 4

Are you serious? The info is everywhere, it would be easier and more productive to typ "Global Warming" into yahoo for a search.

If you just want to watch a movie watch "an inconvenient truth"

You can watch it on www.ovguide.com for free streaming (ei no Downloads)

Answer 5

Causes - http://profend.com/global-warming/pages/causes.html
Effects - http://profend.com/global-warming/pages/effects.html
Consequences - http://profend.com/global-warming/pages/future.html
Solutions - http://profend.com/global-warming/pages/combat.html#5
Prevention - http://profend.com/global-warming/pages/combat.html
Definition - http://profend.com/global-warming/pages/preliminaries.html

Answer 6

the causes it us humans ...we cause it with our transportation ..factories ..power plants..the effect is going to be very bad weather ..storms are only going to get worse...our health is also at risk...because disease found around the equator will be moving around every where

Answer 7

try and find out in=>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

else find a bit of it in my blog-->>
http://blogs.ibibo.com/ViewComments.aspx?mid=0cb434aa-db31-47d9-a48f-9c6559a048c2&blogid=2a4a8f1d-8a39-4d7f-b0d9-04b7dca7eec6

Answer 8

Global warming is caused by smoke and pollution, mainly in the air and a lot of the gas companies are to blame for it.
Consequences is sort of a toughie because there are a lot.
The consequences are that a lot of the icebergs on earth will soon melt and the weather will go crazier than my little sister in the middle of a pool of soda.
The definition is pretty much included in the previous text I have entered. Now, lets see, what else can I give you?
Do you mind if it's long?

The term "global warming" is a specific example of the broader term climate change, which can also refer to global cooling. In common usage, the term refers to recent warming and implies a human influence.[4] The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) uses the term "climate change" for human-caused change, and "climate variability" for other changes.[5] The term "anthropogenic global warming" (AGW) is sometimes used when focusing on human-induced changes.

The Earth's climate changes in response to external forcing, including variations in its orbit around the sun (orbital forcing),[6][7][8] volcanic eruptions, and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. The detailed causes of the recent warming remain an active field of research, but the scientific consensus[9][10] identifies elevated levels of greenhouse gases due to human activity as the main influence. This attribution is clearest for the most recent 50 years, for which the most detailed data are available. In contrast to the scientific consensus that recent warming is mainly attributable to elevated levels of greenhouse gases, other hypotheses have been suggested to explain the observed increase in mean global temperature. One such hypothesis proposes that warming may be the result of variations in solar activity.[11][12][13][14]

None of the effects of forcing are instantaneous. The thermal inertia of the Earth's oceans and slow responses of other indirect effects mean that the Earth's current climate is not in equilibrium with the forcing imposed. Climate commitment studies indicate that even if greenhouse gases were stabilized at 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F) would still occur.[15]

The greenhouse effect was discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824 and was first investigated quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896. It is the process by which absorption and emission of infrared radiation by atmospheric gases warms a planet's atmosphere and surface.

Existence of the greenhouse effect as such is not disputed. Naturally occurring greenhouse gases have a mean warming effect of about 33 °C (59 °F), without which Earth would be uninhabitable.[16][17] The debate centers on how the strength of the greenhouse effect is changed when human activity increases the atmospheric concentrations of some greenhouse gases.

On Earth, the major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36–70% of the greenhouse effect (not including clouds); carbon dioxide (CO2), which causes 9–26%; methane (CH4), which causes 4–9%; and ozone, which causes 3–7%.[18][19] Some other naturally occurring gases contribute very small fractions of the greenhouse effect; one of these, nitrous oxide (N2O), is increasing in concentration owing to human activity such as agriculture. The atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and methane have increased by 31% and 149% respectively above pre-industrial levels since 1750. These levels are considerably higher than at any time during the last 650,000 years, the period for which reliable data has been extracted from ice cores. From less direct geological evidence it is believed that CO2 values this high were last attained 20 million years ago.[20] Fossil fuel burning has produced about three-quarters of the increase in CO2 from human activity over the past 20 years. Most of the rest is due to land-use change, in particular deforestation.[21]

The present atmospheric concentration of CO2 is about 383 parts per million (ppm) by volume.[22] Future CO2 levels are expected to rise due to ongoing burning of fossil fuels and land-use change. The rate of rise will depend on uncertain economic, sociological, technological, and natural developments, but may be ultimately limited by the availability of fossil fuels. The IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios gives a wide range of future CO2 scenarios, ranging from 541 to 970 ppm by the year 2100.[23] Fossil fuel reserves are sufficient to reach this level and continue emissions past 2100, if coal, tar sands or methane clathrates are extensively used.[24]


A few papers suggest that the Sun's contribution may have been underestimated. Two researchers at Duke University, Bruce West and Nicola Scafetta, have estimated that the Sun may have contributed about 45–50% of the increase in the average global surface temperature over the period 1900–2000, and about 25–35% between 1980 and 2000.[29] A paper by Peter Stott and other researchers suggest that climate models overestimate the relative effect of greenhouse gases compared to solar forcing; they also suggest that the cooling effects of volcanic dust and sulfate aerosols have been underestimated.[30] They nevertheless conclude that even with an enhanced climate sensitivity to solar forcing, most of the warming during the latest decades is attributable to the increases in greenhouse gases.

A different hypothesis is that variations in solar output, possibly amplified by cloud seeding via galactic cosmic rays, may have contributed to recent warming.[31] It suggests magnetic activity of the sun is a crucial factor which deflects cosmic rays that may influence the generation of cloud condensation nuclei and thereby affect the climate.[32]

One predicted effect of an increase in solar activity would be a warming of the stratosphere; however, the observed effect since at least 1960 has been a cooling of the lower stratosphere, which is one of the predicted results of greenhouse gas warming.[33] Reduction of stratospheric ozone also has a cooling influence, although substantial ozone depletion did not occur until the late 1970s. Solar variation combined with changes in volcanic activity probably did have a warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950, but a cooling effect since.[1] In 2006, Peter Foukal and other researchers from the United States, Germany, and Switzerland found no net increase of solar brightness over the last thousand years. Solar cycles lead to a small increase of 0.07% in brightness over the last 30 years. This effect is far too small to contribute significantly to global warming.[34][35] A paper by Mike Lockwood and Claus Fröhlich found no relation between global warming and solar radiation since 1985, whether through variations in solar output or variations in cosmic rays.[36] Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen, the main proponents of cloud seeding by galactic cosmic rays, disputed the findings of Lockwood and Fröhlich.[37]


Temperature changes

Two millennia of mean surface temperatures according to different reconstructions, each smoothed on a decadal scale. The unsmoothed, annual value for 2004 is also plotted for reference.Main article: Temperature record

Recent
Global temperatures on both land and sea have increased by 0.75 °C (1.35 °F) relative to the period 1860–1900, according to the instrumental temperature record. This measured temperature increase is not significantly affected by the urban heat island effect. Since 1979, land temperatures have increased about twice as fast as ocean temperatures (0.25 °C per decade against 0.13 °C per decade).[38] Temperatures in the lower troposphere have increased between 0.12 and 0.22 °C (0.22 and 0.4 °F) per decade since 1979, according to satellite temperature measurements. Temperature is believed to have been relatively stable over the one or two thousand years before 1850, with possibly regional fluctuations such as the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age.

Sea temperatures increase more slowly than those on land both because of the larger effective heat capacity of the oceans and because the ocean can lose heat by evaporation more readily than the land.[39] Since the northern hemisphere has more land mass than the southern it warms faster; also there are extensive areas of seasonal snow cover subject to the snow-albedo feedback. Although more greenhouse gases are emitted in the northern than southern hemisphere this does not contribute to the asymmetry of warming as the major gases are essentially well-mixed between hemispheres.

Based on estimates by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2005 was the warmest year since reliable, widespread instrumental measurements became available in the late 1800s, exceeding the previous record set in 1998 by a few hundredths of a degree.[40] Estimates prepared by the World Meteorological Organization and the Climatic Research Unit concluded that 2005 was the second warmest year, behind 1998.[41][42]

Anthropogenic emissions of other pollutants—notably sulfate aerosols—can exert a cooling effect by increasing the reflection of incoming sunlight. This partially accounts for the cooling seen in the temperature record in the middle of the twentieth century,[43] though the cooling may also be due in part to natural variability.

Paleoclimatologist William Ruddiman has argued that human influence on the global climate began around 8,000 years ago with the start of forest clearing to provide land for agriculture and 5,000 years ago with the start of Asian rice irrigation.[44] Ruddiman's interpretation of the historical record, with respect to the methane data, has been disputed.[45]


Pre-human climate variations

Curves of reconstructed temperature at two locations in Antarctica and a global record of variations in glacial ice volume. Today's date is on the left side of the graph.Further information: Paleoclimatology
See also: Snowball Earth
Earth has experienced warming and cooling many times in the past. The recent Antarctic EPICA ice core spans 800,000 years, including eight glacial cycles timed by orbital variations with interglacial warm periods comparable to present temperatures.[46]

A rapid buildup of greenhouse gases caused warming in the early Jurassic period (about 180 million years ago), with average temperatures rising by 5 °C (9 °F). Research by the Open University indicates that the warming caused the rate of rock weathering to increase by 400%. As such weathering locks away carbon in calcite and dolomite, CO2 levels dropped back to normal over roughly the next 150,000 years.[47][48]

Sudden releases of methane from clathrate compounds (the clathrate gun hypothesis) have been hypothesized as a cause for other warming events in the distant past, including the Permian-Triassic extinction event (about 251 million years ago) and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (about 55 million years ago).


Climate models

The projected temperature increase for a range of stabilization scenarios (the coloured bands). The black line in middle of the shaded area indicates 'best estimates'; the red and the blue lines the likely limits. From the work of IPCC AR4, 2007.
Calculations of global warming prepared in or before 2001 from a range of climate models under the SRES A2 emissions scenario, which assumes no action is taken to reduce emissions.
The geographic distribution of surface warming during the 21st century calculated by the HadCM3 climate model if a business as usual scenario is assumed for economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions. In this figure, the globally averaged warming corresponds to 3.0 °C (5.4 °F).Main article: Global climate model
Scientists have studied global warming with computer models of the climate. These models are based on physical principles of fluid dynamics, radiative transfer, and other processes, with some simplifications being necessary because of limitations in computer power. These models predict that the effect of adding greenhouse gases is to produce a warmer climate.[49] However, even when the same assumptions of future GHG levels are used, there still remains a considerable range of climate sensitivity.

Including uncertainties in future greenhouse gas concentrations and climate modelling, the IPCC anticipates a warming of 1.1 °C to 6.4 °C (2.0 °F to 11.5 °F) between 1990 and 2100.[1] Models have also been used to help investigate the causes of recent climate change by comparing the observed changes to those that the models project from various natural and human derived causes.

Current climate models produce a good match to observations of global temperature changes over the last century, but do not simulate all aspects of climate.[50] These models do not unambiguously attribute the warming that occurred from approximately 1910 to 1945 to either natural variation or human effects; however, they suggest that the warming since 1975 is dominated by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

Most global climate models, when run to project future climate, are forced by imposed greenhouse gas scenarios, generally one from the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES). Less commonly, models may be run by adding a simulation of the carbon cycle; this generally shows a positive feedback, though this response is uncertain (under the A2 SRES scenario, responses vary between an extra 20 and 200 ppm of CO2). Some observational studies also show a positive feedback.[51][52][53]

The representation of clouds is one of the main sources of uncertainty in present-generation models, though progress is being made on this problem.[54] There is also an ongoing discussion as to whether climate models are neglecting important indirect and feedback effects of solar variability.


Attributed and expected effects
Main article: Effects of global warming

Sparse records indicate that glaciers have been retreating since the early 1800s. In the 1950s measurements began that allow the monitoring of glacial mass balance, reported to the WGMS and the NSIDC.Though it is difficult to connect specific weather events to global warming, an increase in global temperatures may in turn cause other changes, including glacial retreat and worldwide sea level rise. Changes in the amount and pattern of precipitation may result in flooding and drought. There may also be changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Other effects may include changes in agricultural yields, reduced summer streamflows, species extinctions and increases in the range of disease vectors.

Some effects on both the natural environment and human life are, at least in part, already being attributed to global warming. A 2001 report by the IPCC suggests that glacier retreat, ice shelf disruption such as the Larsen Ice Shelf, sea level rise, changes in rainfall patterns, increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, are being attributed in part to global warming.[55] While changes are expected for overall patterns, intensity, and frequencies, it is difficult to attribute specific events to global warming. Other expected effects include water scarcity in some regions and increased precipitation in others, changes in mountain snowpack, and adverse health effects from warmer temperatures.[56]

Increasing deaths, displacements, and economic losses projected due to extreme weather attributed to global warming may be exacerbated by growing population densities in affected areas, although temperate regions are projected to experience some minor benefits, such as fewer deaths due to cold exposure.[57] A summary of probable effects and recent understanding can be found in the report made for the IPCC Third Assessment Report by Working Group II.[55] The newer IPCC Fourth Assessment Report summary reports that there is observational evidence for an increase in intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic Ocean since about 1970, in correlation with the increase in sea surface temperature, but that the detection of long-term trends is complicated by the quality of records prior to routine satellite observations. The summary also states that there is no clear trend in the annual worldwide number of tropical cyclones.[1]

Additional anticipated effects include sea level rise of 110 to 770 millimeters (0.36 to 2.5 ft) between 1990 and 2100,[58] repercussions to agriculture, possible slowing of the thermohaline circulation, reductions in the ozone layer, increased intensity of hurricanes and extreme weather events, lowering of ocean pH, and the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. One study predicts 18% to 35% of a sample of 1,103 animal and plant species would be extinct by 2050, based on future climate projections.[59] Two populations of Bay checkerspot butterfly are being threatened by changes in precipitation, though few mechanistic studies have documented extinctions due to recent climate change.[60]





Economics
Main articles: Economics of global warming and Low-carbon economy
Some economists have tried to estimate the aggregate net economic costs of damages from climate change across the globe. Such estimates have so far failed to reach conclusive findings; in a survey of 100 estimates, the values ran from US$-10 per tonne of carbon (tC) (US$-3 per tonne of carbon dioxide) up to US$350/tC (US$95 per tonne of carbon dioxide), with a mean of US$43 per tonne of carbon (US$12 per tonne of carbon dioxide).[57] One widely-publicized report on potential economic impact is the Stern Review; it suggests that extreme weather might reduce global gross domestic product by up to 1%, and that in a worst case scenario global per capita consumption could fall 20%.[61] The report's methodology, advocacy and conclusions have been criticized by many economists, primarily around the Review's assumptions of discounting and its choices of scenarios,[62] while others have supported the general attempt to quantify economic risk, even if not the specific numbers.[63][64]

In a summary of economic cost associated with climate change, the United Nations Environment Programme emphasizes the risks to insurers, reinsurers, and banks of increasingly traumatic and costly weather events. Other economic sectors likely to face difficulties related to climate change include agriculture and transport. Developing countries, rather than the developed world, are at greatest economic risk.[65]

It wont let me put in pictures!
Have fun reading! LOL!