Global Warming

All About Global Warming

1)       Global warming is the process when the Earth heats up, and the temperature rises.
2)      Carbon dioxide, water vapour, nitrous oxide and methane are the main greenhouse gases. These greenhouse gases trap heat and light from the Sun in the Earth’s atmosphere; this increases the temperature, and causes global warming.
3)      Since the beginning of the 20^th century, the average temperature of the Earth has risen by 0.8 degree Celsius.
4)      There are two main scales to measure temperature the Celsius scale and the Fahrenheit scale
5)      Meteorology is the science that studies atmospheric phenomena, especially those that relate to weather.
6)      Over 150,000 deaths are caused globally every year, due to frequent heat waves and droughts, increased floods, and more powerful storms-some of the effects of global warming.
7)      According to a report from the World Health Organization published in 2005, climate related deaths will double in the next 25 years.
8)      The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere is usually expressed in parts per million, or ppm by weight. At present, the burning of fossil fuels releases 7 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere each year, which in turn, will produce 26.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide gas.
9)      The 13 warmest years on record have all occurred in the 15 years since 1997. The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for March 2012,was the 16^th warmest on record.
10)   Paleoclimatology is a very big name for the study of climate changes that have happened during the entire history of the Earth.
11)   Climate and weather are the two aspects of meteorology.
12)   Weather is the day-to-day state of the atmosphere in a region.  It deals with sunshine, rain, clouds cover, winds, hail, snow, sleet, freezing rain, flooding, blizzards, storms, heat waves and other conditions on a particular day or time.
13)   Climate is how the atmosphere ‘behaves’ over relatively long periods of time
14) Earliest Drought: In 436 BC, thousands of starving Romans drowned themselves in the Tiber river because severe drought had create an acute shortage of food. This was one of the earliest recorded famines brought about by prolonged drought.
15) The Nobel peace Prize 2007 was awarded jointly to Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change and Albert Arnold Gore Jr. "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man made climate change and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change"
16) WMO is the World Meteorological Organization. It was established in 1950 as a specialized Agency of the United Nations Organization. Its role is to study the state and behavior of the Earth's atmosphere,its interaction with the oceans, the climate it produces, and the distribution of water resources.Also it deals with all related sciences as well.
17) The first world Climate Change Conference was held in 1979. It was organized by the World Meteorological Organization at Geneva.
18)
Date Significance
22-Mar World Water Day
23-Mar World Meteorological Day
22-Apr International Mother Earth Day
5-Jun World Environment Day
16-Sep International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer


19) There are two main scales to measure temperature - the Celsius scale and the Fahrenheit scale.


20) Did you know that spiders, webs can help us study global warming? This is because they trap droplets of fog, or cloud water. Spider webs are collected by scientists as samples for the study of the changes in the atmosphere.


21) Svante Arrhenius was a Swedish physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner. He is famous as the father of climate change science.


22) Greenland's glaciers keep shrinking as higher surface temperatures have created record mass losses in 2010 and 2011. The ice lost by just one of its glaciers comes to 20 million tonnes per day.


23) Did you know that volcanoes may sometimes actually reduce global warming? This is because a massive explosion would result in huge amounts of sulfuric acid combining with water vapour to form a shield that reflects sunlight away from the Earth. This may cool the Earth for a year or two, but an explosion of this magnitude could prove disastrous in itself.


24) Water vapour plays an important role in keeping the Earth at a temperature that is friendly to life. Ice and snow on the Earth's surface reflect sunlight, and if there was no water vapour in the atmosphere to trap the heat, the Earth would become too cold to support life.


25) Brown Water: As a result of global warming, temperatures will rise. This will cause more coloured organic matter to run off into lakes. The water in the lakes will become brown. Brown water keeps the sunlight from reaching the bottom of the lake. Algae at the bottom of the lake can't survive without sunlight.