Global warming is changing the weather patterns around the globe. This also impacts on the 'carbon sinks' of the world, the biggest of which is the Amazon rainforest. Your assignment is to research the impact of the global warming on the ability of the amazon rainforest to absorb the world's carbon emissions and make predictions for the future based on current scientific evidence. This is a controversial issue and scientists may not necessarily all agree. You are expected to discuss at least two different scientific opinions, supported by statistical evidence.'
0. ABSTRACT
Global warming leads to weather change. This also has been affecting the 'carbon sinks' of the earth, the largest of which is the Amazon rainforest. However, while some call global warming a theory, others call it a recognized set of facts. Because of the level of interest of the theme, there is a large amount of research available, which this research summarizes as existing scientific evidence on weather change and its drivers, emphasizing the regions by using graphs, charts, and discussing science opinion. Ultimately, predictions for the amazon will be given based on existing evidence. Day by day, more and more amazon forest's area will be damaged by drought, logging, and fire burn repeatedly. These zone and regional progressions are worsened when ocean surface differences and bad weather events cause severe drought episodes and the burning of titanic forested lands. Indeed Global warming buttress these trends by uplifting air heats, increasing waterless season severity and increasing the rate of extreme climate events
BACKGROUND
Changes in weather have significant implications for current lives, for coming generations and for bio-networks on which humanity is contingent. Moreover Global warming and weather change are features of our environment which cannot be rapidly or simply discounted. Many groups still toughly think that the changes World is seeing are the result of a natural climatic regulation. Regardless of one's perspective the effects of global warming zones countable set of environmental results that are in addition to any regular changes in weather. That is why the effects of global warming have catastrophic potential. Global warming as affected by greenhouse gas emissions can lead us to a confident imbalance of nature. As a result, weather change has been and remains to be the subject of laborious scientific exploration and public discussions.
There is strong proof that the warming of global in excess of the previous half-century has been caused mostly by human doings, such as changes in land use including cultivation and deforestation and the burning of old fuels, The size of the future's temperature rises and other features of weather change, especially in the regional scale, are still topic to indecision.
Deforestation with an expected addition of tropical rain forests, especially in the Amazon, the possibility of "carbon sinks" on the planet to capture CO2 from the atmosphere will be reduced, adding an further complications to the problem. The increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations will also increase the acidity of the ocean and material damage absorb CO2, thus weakening "the crow", which is also a natural mechanism of the planet based CO2 capture the carbon cycle to maintain its natural.
"Today, rapid deforestation threatens the Amazon. At current rates, 55 precents of its rain forests could be gone by 2030-a looming disaster not only for the region's plants and animals, but for the world"
(World's largest tropical rain forest and river basin)
(Source: Deforestation in the Amazon)
However there is something that keeps people thinking that humans do not cause most of modern-day global warming. In the other words global warming is just a theory or even weather changing also benefit the people and their house-the earth
AIM
In view of the ongoing public and political discussions about weather change, the aim of this research is to summarize the existing scientific indications on weather change - statistics of the global warming trend and its drivers to the 'carbon skins' of the world - the Amazon rainforest. From that expectations will be made predictions for the future based on current scientific indications.
METHODOLOGY
The proposed research is applied, descriptive, experimental and longitudinal. The population of the proposed research is formed by graphs and images from the internet public database and books. The thinking-logic method was used to give predictions based on the current scientific evidences. The synthetic-analytic method was used to process the obtained information from different public resources such as internet or public books. The information was picked up from dissimilar sources that were text books on the internet, physical books about global warming and weather change.
FINDINGS
Statistics of the global warming trend
Surface Temperature of the earth
Surface temperature in the earth has increased by more than six degrees Celsius since about 1950.
Sea Level Rise
As we all recognize that if there is an increase in temperature of water, it enlarges. Add this to melting water from arctic and the glaciers. As a result, a measurable amount of sea level rise will be seen. During the period of 22 years from 1870 till 1992, the average ocean level increase has been 1.7 mm. As the graphs above point out, in 1993 those rates have closely doubled starting.
the Levels of Carbon Dioxide
Carbon dioxide (CO2) in atmosphere has been around longer than humanity. As we all know, CO2 is part of a natural process including vegetation and wildlife. Manmade CO2 comes from the burning of old fuels used in energy companies, industrial companies and the different types of transport. The chart above shows the levels of CO2 restrained in the atmosphere over the past 400,000 years. Everything seems quite regular until about 1950 where as a replacement for following the series of downward and upward drifts, the levels of CO2 increased further than any point in history and keep increasing. The level of CO2 reached 380 ppm in 2005.
There are three factual indicators of heating up. The factor is really with the third one, the CO2. Measurements from surface, aircraft and satellite studies, along with the lab observations and calculations, shows that out of the clouds, the two gases make the largest contribution of the effects GHG is water vapour followed by CO2. There are small contributions from many other gases including ozone, methane, nitrous oxide and synthetic gases such as CFCs.
Unfortunately heating up is thought to cause adverse impacts the Amazon tropical forest. "Global warming will wreck attempts to save the Amazon rainforest, according to a devastating new study which predicts that one-third of its trees will be killed by even modest temperature rises"
(Amazon could shrink by 85% due to weather change, scientists say).
"Even in pristine rainforests unaffected by human activities such as logging or burning, researchers have noticed dramatic differences in the growth patterns of trees over the past 20 years. Strange things are happening in lush Amazonian rainforests and scientists said rising levels of carbon dioxide could be the cause"
(Carbon Dioxide Is Key Suspect in Rainforest Change)
Such as "Of 115 tree genera, they found that two became significantly more common and 14 became significantly rarer over the 15 years of the study. The winners tended to be tall, relatively fast-growing canopy trees, while the losers tended to be slower-growing trees that live their whole lives in the dim depths of the forest below the canopy".
(Amazonian rainforests are changing).
Moreover "Up to 85% of the forest could be lost if spiral greenhouse gas emissions are not brought under control, the experts said. But even under the most optimistic weather change scenarios, the destruction of large parts of the forest is"
(Amazon could shrink by 85% due to weather change, scientists say).
Weather Change Impacts in the Amazon
Warming water temperatures
Because of global warming will impact temperature dependent species. Temperature tolerances often govern both the local and biogeographic distribution limits of freshwater fishes (Carpenter et al., 1992). Distributions of aquatic species will likely change as some species invade more high altitude habitats or disappear from the low altitudinal limits of their distribution. Elevated temperatures may also result in reduced water dissolved oxygen concentrations, which may have immediate adverse effects on eggs and larvae, which rely on dissolved oxygen for survival (Carpenter et al., 1992). Increased water temperatures and reduced precipitation may also reduce suitable habitat during dry, warm summer months and potentially lead to increased exotic species. Exotic fish species often out-compete native species for habitat and food resources and lead to declines in native populations and decreased species diversity (Latini and Petrere Jr, 2004).
Decreased precipitation during dry months
This will affect many Amazonian streams and freshwater systems. Small, shallow habitats (ponds, headwater streams, marshes, and small lakes) will likely experience the first effects of reduced precipitation (Carpenter et al., 1992). While prospects for successful relocation of spawning activities for fishes exist, some may be thwarted by the strong imprinting and homing behaviour present in many species.
Other views
Plants need CO2
Follow by the point of scientific view identified that "Because plants need CO2 to conduct photosynthesis, increased atmospheric CO2 has the potential to be highly beneficial to many plant species" (Are raising Carbon Dioxide Levels Better for plants). CO2 enrichment may be beneficial for plantations because higher atmospheric concentrations of CO2 increase the water-use efficiency of some species (i.e., Eucalyptus). In some Eucalyptus species increased when exposed to high concentrations of CO2 (Hall et al., 1992).
Weather changes is just a natural tendency
Furthermore "A positive weather forcing will tend to cause a warming, and a negative forcing a cooling. The weather changes act to restore the balance between the energy absorbed from the Sun and the infrared energy emitted into space" (A summary of the science).
All these things to say that whether weather change - an increase of CO2 is even just the active earth or natural tendencies.
CONCLUSIONS
From things were listed above. It can be clearly seen that. Global warming is a true story and it has effects widely to the amazon rainforest. At this point, there are much more questions than answers and anyone who says otherwise is doing so for reasons outside of getting to the scientific truth. The earth is warming has been known. The truthful evidence cannot be disputed. If people had the power today to decide what path should be taken, what would be chosen? Do nothing until science has been proven, or begin a program that reduces the amounts of CO2 that man is introducing into the atmosphere?
PREDICTIONS
Our earth will be warm up significantly in this century. The rise in the average global temperature will rest on on how much CO2 emissions in the next years. Many scientific opinion predict that if CO2 emissions continue at the current level, the average temperature of the earth will increase by around 2-5°C by 2050 and by 5-10°C in the end of the century. Indeed, this dramatic rising in temperature is difficult to envisage the horror of its effect on our planet's bionetworks.
Few studies describe that there are 20% chances that global warming could still be greater, over 10°C, and in addition compounded by feedback effects which enhance the process by a further 2°C, in the last decades . A 20% likelihood of having a rise in temperature grander than 12°C in the end of this century is not a negligible probability.
