By 2030, certain gasses in the atmosphere present in small amounts but with combined effect could very well aggravate the ever-present threat of global warming, warn environmental savants.
Scientifically termed “trace gasses,” these include nitrous oxide (laughing gas), methane and chlorofluorocarbons (used in refrigeration and aerosol sprays in industry, fluorinated gasses, ozone, nitrous oxide, methane and carbon dioxide.
However, most of the abundant gasses that affect climate are carbon dioxide whose two principal man-made sources are burning of fossil fuels and clearing of forest land for agriculture. This practice is usually seen in tropical countries. In the atmosphere, it comprises about 0.03 percent of its volume.
A document, “The Greenhouse Gases” released by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) explains carbon dioxide and trace gasses constitute what are known as “greenhouse gasses.” Many Filipinos are not aware of “greenhouse gasses.”
However, farmers in Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) and other regions who have greenhouses know this phenomenon that occurs in a greenhouse where heat from the sun enters the greenhouse glass or plastic sheeting.
Such heat warms the plants, air and soil inside a greenhouse. They explain that the glass or plastic sheeting is almost completely transparent to the sun, letting through up to 90% of the radiation striking it.
A cooling mechanism stabilizes the temperature at a reasonable level that, however, much higher than the air outside. This cooling mechanism depends on the way in which the interior radiates energy (radiation or heat) back into the atmosphere and ultimately, into space.
In the case of the rising temperature of the earth caused by the greenhouse gasses, the greenhouse effect refers to the difference between the amount of radiation emitted by the earth and that sent by the atmosphere into space.
The more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, the more radiation is absorbed from the earth, and, therefore, the less energy is shot back into space, explains the UNEP document.
Such a situation explains why increasing concentrations of trace gasses in the atmosphere create a substantially warmer climate. “By absorbing some of the radiation emitted by earth, they can force the temperature of the earth – like that of a greenhouse—to rise, “explains the document.
So, what can we take as a simple but rationale guess from the explanation?
If present trends continue, a global warming of a few degrees Centigrade will be inevitable before the middle of the next century. But which is happening earlier if banked against the rationale guess.
Such an increase would have a profound effect on climate. And as said the few degrees Centigrade is already making an impact. Farmers in CAR who hold the soil every day in their hands and can determine if a clump of soil is warm or not know what they are saying when they comment drily, “The soil gets warmer when not supposed to. And it’s not getting any better. Far from it. We have to cope.”
As climate change, so does the habitat for living things. Animals that are adapted to a certain climate become threatened. Humans depend on predictable patterns in order to grow specific food crops.
In the case of CAR, farmers in the region are slowly digesting the fact that climate unpredictability will not allow them to grow crops they have been doing for a long time.
On the other hand, scientists also worry that tropical diseases will expand beyond borders into ranges of what are now more temperate regions if the temperature of these areas increase.
As the earth warms up, it emits more radiation but more water would also be evaporated from the earth’s surface. This is so since the extra radiation from the atmosphere would be used to evaporate more water that heats the surface.
Such a net result of increasing the greenhouse effect on earth is not only a warmer earth but a drier soil and wetter atmosphere.
A crucial question to raise is whether sea levels will rise as a consequence of an increase in temperature. Scientists are not really sure whether such a phenomenon would occur.
However, if the Antarctic Ice were to melt, scientists are sure world sea levels would rise by an estimated 80 metres. As a result, many of the world’s major cities and all its ports would be flooded.
It has been stressed, however, that such an event is not likely to occur in the future. “Melting of the Antarctic Ice would take centuries and require temperature rises of the order of 20 degrees Centigrade.”
Further, the effects would vary from place to place, with high altitudes feeling them more strongly than areas near the Equator.
Climatic models suggest that the earth’s average surface temperature would increase by some 4 degrees Centigrade. The warming would be most marked in the Northern Hemisphere in the winter at high latitudes.
In the Southern Hemisphere, the largest warming would occur in Antarctica, In Southeast Asia, where the Philippines is part of, will bear the brunt of worsening global climate. Southeast Asia is one of the planet’s most vulnerable regions to climate change.
Nineteen of the 25 cities most exposed to a one-meter-sea-level rise are in Asia, seven of the 25 in the Philippines alone. But sea levels could rise by more than 15 metres by some estimates. Southeast Asian nations and economies will be increasingly vulnerable without adaptation and mitigation.
As in the case of the Philippines, annual losses from typhoons have been estimated at 1.2 percent of GDP. Climate impacts threaten to significantly lower the country’s GDP and the well-being of Filipinos by 2040 unless these can be reduced by two-thirds.
Although uncertainties still remain, recent studies of the effects of the greenhouse gasses are unanimous that there will be warming by the year 2030. The effect would be anything from 1 to 7 degrees Centigrade, with a most likely value of 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Centigrade.
A global warming of 1.5 to 5.5 degrees Centigrade is estimated to cause a sea level rise between 20 to 165 centimeters. Since nearly one-third of all human populations live within a 60 km. of a coastline, a sea level rise of even one meter could have profound influences on habitation patterns, like causing large-scale migration from low- lying coastal areas.
The UNEP document observes such changes are already underway, since sea levels are rising by about 1 mm a year, or 10 centimeters, a century.
There are four suggestions being offered to deal with the problem of greenhouse effect: First, reduce the rates at which fossil fossil fuels are burnt (and at which other industrial processes produce greenhouse gasses;
Filter out the greenhouse gasses during industrial production and dispose of them elsewhere than in the atmosphere;
Recover greenhouse gasses already released into the atmosphere and dispose of them elsewhere, and;
Accept the changing environment and adapt to it.
Human activity is equally to blame for increasingly harsh climate events such as heatwaves, floods, droughts and achieving net-zero greenhouse emission. In this case, Southeast Asian nations are projected to suffer among the harshest effects of climate change, since most of the region’s countries lack carbon reduction strategies that can mitigate severity of climate risks.
Not many understand the problems caused by accelerated combustion of fossil fuels, increasing use of certain rare gasses and the endless burning of forests as these are converted to farmland.
There is a consensus in the scientific community, however, that global warming, through the greenhouse effect, is one of the major threats to human survival.
If the greenhouse effect is the process through which heat is trapped near the earth’s surface, then look at just how it affects us. Global warming is like piling a lot blankets over you and not getting the heat to escape until you smother softly to death — killing you softly but surely, like pinikpikan.
