Climate Changes Are Threatening The Glacial Part Of Our Planet
Date of issue: 27/03/2009
In the last decade, we have been living in the warmest period since we have been measuring air temperature in meteorological stations. Cold and snowy winters have become a rarity, summers have been becoming drier, and natural hazards more frequent. Climate had changed many times before and Earth experienced warmer and colder periods in the last three million years. There are various reasons for this: radiation changed as well as the movement of the Sun and Earth, where various mountain ranges were forming, flora changed, as well as the coverage of land and seas with ice and snow. Furthermore, more than 150 years ago, man has begun to influence the changes of the energy balance between Earth and universe. His »intervention« in the climate can be seen through the changes of the atmospheric structure and characteristics of the Earth´s surface. Following, more than 35 percent of exceeding carbon dioxide collected in the atmosphere in comparison to the period before the industrial revolution. Consequently, the »greenhouse effect« and warming have been increasing; the latter amounts on a global scale almost to 0,8 °C in 100 years. Climate changes are threatening the glacial part of Earth, which is formed by seawater and polar ice, mountain glaciers and permafrost area. The latter has an important role in shaping the climate of the entire planet. In the mountain world and near the poles, the increase of temperature is even more explicit and has numerous consequences for the living and non-living world. Glaciers in all continents are reducing, the volume of precipitation and their timing are changing as well as the mean flow-rates and flora and fauna. In Slovenia, the observations of the Triglav glacier, which started in 1946, indicate that the initial surface of the glacier decreased from 15 hectares to 0,7 hectares, which represents the twentieth of the initial surface. The current glacier volume presents merely one percent of the volume half a century ago. The Arctic has been warming at least twice faster than the remaining parts of the world. In summer of 2007, the amount of ice that melted there hasn´t been noticed in the last 600 years. Last year, the North Pole became an island for the first time. After more than hundred thousand years, a short cut for maritime transport between the Atlantic and Pacific has been formed. Seawater ice is normally covered by snow and its main thermostatic task is to maintain the coldness in the polar regions. Namely, ice is highly efficiently reflecting the sun radiation back to the universe; on the other hand, sea surface without ice absorbs the majority of the sun’s radiation and is therefore warming. Following, a reverse loop, which is growing stronger, begins to work faster: the smaller the volume of ice, the warmer the sea and ice is melting even faster. This is happening in the polar regions of the Northern hemisphere, where ecosystems and life habits and conditions of inhabitants in Alaska, Greenland and other islands in the Arctic regions of Scandinavia and Siberia are changing. Numerous animals in polar regions are endangered. The decrease of seawater ice can cause serious changes in marine ecosystems, which can influence marine mammals and populations, which present a food source for seabirds, seals and whales. The permanent frozen soil, which is melting around the Arctic, is also highly sensitive to global warming. Consequently, swamp areas are spreading, while buildings and infrastructure are sinking. Emissions of methane, which was caught in the permanent frozen soil and presents a strong greenhouse gas, are increasing. In the Antarctic, climate changes are less obvious, since there is less land in the Southern hemisphere and the processes are slower. If the humanity doesn´t stop the growth of the fossil fuel consumption, climate changes will enhance and polar regions, as we know them nowadays, shall be lost for millenniums. Climate changes shall dictate new ecosystems, different structure of the plant and animal world, and consequently also different behavior of local inhabitants.
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