Africa Institute of Graduate Studies

Master of Disaster Risk Management and

Sustainable Development

Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRM 114)

Assignment:
How Global warming is a driving force for climate change

by;

1. Abdifitah Mohamud Abdullahi Aigs/114/2016

Instructor: Dr. R. U. Reddy

Jigjiga Ethiopia
Table of contents
Table of contents .................................................................................................................. I

What is Climate Change ..................................................................................................... 1

Global warming .................................................................................................................. 2

Global warming and climate change................................................................................... 2

Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 3

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What is Climate Change
Observed changes over the 20th century include increases in global air and ocean
temperature, rising global sea levels, long-term sustained widespread reduction of snow
and ice cover, and changes in atmospheric and ocean circulation as well as regional
weather patterns, which influence seasonal rainfall conditions. These changes are caused
by extra heat in the climate system due to the addition of greenhouse gases to the
atmosphere. These additional greenhouse gases are primarily input by human activities
such as the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), deforestation, agriculture,
and land-use changes. These activities increase the amount of ‘heat-trapping’ greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere. The pattern of observed changes in the climate system is
consistent with an increased greenhouse effect. Other climatic influences such as
volcanoes, the sun and natural variability cannot alone explain the timing and extent of
the observed changes.

Climate, refers to the long-term regional or global average of temperature, humidity and
rainfall patterns over seasons, years or decades.

While the weather can change in just a few hours, climate changes over longer
timeframes.

Climate change is the significant variation of average weather conditions becoming, for
example, warmer, wetter, or drier—over several decades or longer. It is the longer-term
trend that differentiates climate change from natural weather variability.

Human activity leads to change in the atmospheric composition either directly (via
emissions of gases or particles) or indirectly (via atmospheric chemistry). Anthropogenic
emissions have driven the changes in WMGHG concentrations during the Industrial Era.
Radiative forcing (RF) is a measure of the net change in the energy balance of the Earth
system in response to some external perturbation; positive RF leads to a warming and
negative RF to a cooling. The RF concept is valuable for comparing the influence on global
mean surface temperature of most individual agents affecting the Earth’s radiation
balance.

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Global warming
Global warming is the slow increase in the average tempera ture of the earth’s
atmosphere because an increased amount of the energy (heat) striking the earth from the
sun is being trapped in the atmosphere and not radiated out into space.

The earth’s atmosphere has always acted like a greenhouse to capture the sun’s heat,
ensuring that the earth has enjoyed temperatures that permitted the emergence of life forms
as we know them, including humans.

Without our atmospheric greenhouse the earth would be very cold. Global warming,
however, is the equivalent of a greenhouse with high efficiency reflective glass installed
the wrong way around.

Ionically, the best evidence of this may come from a terrible cooling event that took place
some 1,500 years ago. Two massive volcanic eruptions, one year after another placed so
much black dust into the upper atmosphere that little sunlight could penetrate.
Temperatures plummeted. Crops failed. People died of starvation and the Black Death
started its march. As the dust slowly fell to earth, the sun was again able to warn the world
and life returned to normal.

Today, we have the opposite problem. Today, the problem is not that too little sun warmth
is reaching the earth, but that too much is being trapped in our atmosphere.

So much heat is being kept inside greenhouse earth that the temperature of the earth is
going up faster than at any previous time in history. NASA provides an excellent course
module on the science of global warming.

Global warming and climate change

The ocean soaks up most of the heat from global warming. The rate at which the ocean is
warming strongly increased over the past two decades, across all depths of the ocean. As
the ocean warms, its volume increases since water expands as it gets warmer. Melting ice
sheets also cause sea levels to rise, threatening coastal and island communities. In addition,
the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide, keeping it from the atmosphere. But more carbon dioxide
makes the ocean more acidic, which endangers marine life and coral reefs.

The Earth’s climate is changing and the global climate is projected to continue to change
over this century and beyond. The magnitude of climate change beyond the next few
decades will depend primarily on the amount of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases emitted
globally and on the remaining uncertainty in the sensitivity of the Earth’s climate to those
emissions. With significant reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs),
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global annual averaged temperature rise could be limited to 2°C or less. However, without
major reductions in these emissions, the increase in annual average global temperatures,
relative to preindustrial times, could reach 5°C or more by the end of this century.

The global climate continues to change rapidly compared to the pace of the natural
variations in climate that have occurred throughout Earth’s history. Trends in globally
averaged temperature, sea level rise, upper-ocean heat content, land-based ice melt, arctic
sea ice, depth of seasonal permafrost thaw, and other climate variables provide consistent
evidence of a warming planet. These observed trends are robust and confirmed by multiple,
independent research groups around the world.

Conclusion
Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the known history of the climate,
primarily as a result of human activities. There is scientific consensus that unmitigated
carbon emissions will lead to global warming of at least several degrees Celsius by 2100,
resulting in high-impacts of local, regional and global risks to human society and natural
ecosystems. Global climate change has already resulted in a wide range of impacts across
every region of the earth as well as many economic sectors.

Impacts related to climate change are evident across regions and in many sectors important
to society, such as human health, agriculture and food security, water supply,
transportation, energy, and biodiversity and ecosystems; impacts are expected to become
increasingly disruptive in the coming decades. There is very high confidence that the
frequency and intensity of extreme heat and heavy precipitation events are increasing in
most continental regions of the world. These trends are consistent with expected physical
responses to a warming climate. The frequency and intensity of extreme high temperature
events are virtually certain to increase in the future as global temperature increases. There
is high confidence that extreme precipitation events will very likely continue to increase in
frequency and intensity throughout most of the world. Observed and projected trends for
other types of extreme events, such as floods, droughts, and severe storms, have more
variable regional characteristics.

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