Zmiany klimatu

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6 Earth's climate sensitivity to CO 2 A team of Binghamton University researchers examined nahcolite crystals found in Colorado's Green River Formation, formed 50 million years old during a hothouse climate. They found that CO 2 levels during this time may have been as low as 680 parts per million (ppm), nearly half the 1125 ppm predicted by previous experiments. CO 2 concentrations 50 million years ago may not have been as high as we once thought they were, but the climate back then was much warmer than it is today. The new data suggests that past predictions significantly underestimate the impact of greenhouse warming and that Earth's climate may be more sensitive to increased carbon dioxide than was once thought. CO 2 levels in the atmosphere today have reached 400 ppm. The only direct measurement of past carbon dioxide concentrations is from ice cores, which only go back less than 1 million years. This time scientists are using reliable, direct chemical measurements that are based on equilibrium thermodynamics. Source: http://phys.org http://geology.gsapubs.org The jet stream It consists of ribbons of very strong winds which move weather systems around the globe. The major jet streams on Earth are westerly winds (flowing west to east). Jet streams are found 9-16 km above the surface of the Earth, just below the tropopause, and can reach speeds of 320 km/h. The position of a jet stream varies within the natural fluctuations of the environment. They are caused by the temperature difference between tropical air masses and polar air masses. What happens in one part of the world depends on what is happening elsewhere – the atmosphere is a complete environment with numerous connections. Source: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk The importance of Arctic sea ice In order to convert one gram of ice at 0°C to 1 milliliter of water you need slightly more than 79 calories. But once the ice is converted to water, adding the same amount of energy increases the temperature of the water to slightly more than 79°C. Now imagine this process on the scale of the Arctic Ocean. Climate change: Arctic The latest research, data and observations prove that Earth's climate change is no longer happening in a gradual way but it has entered a phase classified as „abrupt”. In the following commentary Paul Beckwith, Earth's climate system scientist and a professor at the University of Ottawa (Ontario), illuminates briefly the symptoms confirming this fact and makes his own predictions based on the trends which has emerged over the last few decades. ” Maximum rates of climate change are systematically underestimated in the geological record – title of a study published 10 November 2015 in Nature Communications Scientists have completely underestimated the risks from climate change. If you look at predictions and expectations they are always on the conservative side. The problem is that experts are too segmented and compartmentalized. They don't consider the complete climate system. Glaciologists are not exchanging their findings with atmospheric researchers, the latter are not consulting with methane specialists etc. In order to understand what is happening and get a fuller picture you need to approach the climate system in a holistic fashion. That is the essence of my scientific inquiry which focuses on abrupt climate changes – the current one and those from bygone eras. We extract information on previous climate directly from various physical systems: the instrumental record going back a hundred/hundreds of years, tree rings, ice core proxies on previous atmosphere temperatures, marine sediments, coral rings, stalagmites/ stalactites etc. This is showing us that the climate system was capable of extremely rapid change in temperature over extremely short periods of time. ” We are confronted with a sudden transformation of Earth's climate – Jim Salinger (lead author for the 2007 Nobel Prize winner – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) The changes in the chemistry of the atmosphere that we have precipitated by fossil fuels combustion and industrial land use are much stronger than anything we've seen in the paleorecords. They are happening at least 10-20 times faster than any changes in Earth's history. So now the situation more closely resembles a different climate state in terms of the oceans, atmosphere and sea ice. There's amplification of the warming in the Arctic because of the declining sea ice (12% of volume per decade) and snow cover (22% of coverage per decade). The region is heating up a lot more than the equator: in high Arctic the rate of warming is 8 times faster then the rest of the planet. This decreases the temperature gradient; less heat is transferred from the equator to pole via ocean currents and atmosphere. As a result the jet streams become streakier, wavier and slower in west-to-east direction which leads to an increase in the frequency, severity and duration of extreme weather events. We're seeing more heat waves and droughts, more extreme torrential rainfall events and floods. We're witnessing ever larger, more high intensity storms, because the atmosphere is holding more water vapor. Atmospheric circulation is different and it's leading to all of these phenomena. ” Beyond 1 degree Celsius may elicit rapid, unpredictable and nonlinear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage – United Nations Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases (1990) We often hear that since the start of the industrial revolution in 1750 the Earth has warmed by 0.85°C. If you take a thirty year average, from 1979 to 2009, and then subtract the values from 1750, you get the 0.85°C number. Now take the temperature in 2014 and compare it to 1750. The result is 1.17°C. And if you take this year's average temperature – January through September – and do the difference, the result is 1.26°C. So the planet has warmed more than 1°C. Taking a thirty-year average when you're undergoing an abrupt climate shift is misleading. ” Earth is losing its conditioner – the Arctic sea ice – Dr. Walt N. Meier (research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory) The Arctic Ocean ice cover is being converted to slush. The Arctic has been uniformly a dry place because it's cold and cold air can't hold much moisture. Because of very rapid temperature amplification and extremely large temperature anomalies, there are rain events. As that rainwater freezes and water vapor condenses into clouds, a lot of energy is being released. The low level cloud cover traps the heat. Northern Pacific waters are extremely warm. They are going through the Bering Straight undercutting the ice, making it thinner. On the Atlantic side, off Svalbard and in the high north, there are very warm temperatures. The land surrounding the Arctic Ocean is very warm so lots of fresh warm water from the rivers in Canada and Asia is flowing into the Atlantic Ocean. Fires in the Arctic circle are intensifying. The ash darkens the region. Darkening Arctic is absorbing a lot of energy. These factors change the behavior of the ice. It is completely different from what we saw before. Over winter it will reform but nowhere near as thick as it was. It's primed this year to be completely smashed next year and the year after. Experts thought that the ice would be thick just north of the Canadian archipelago and that the so called „fast” ice – which attaches to shorelines – would still be left. That ice has just sheared off completely. ” Soon we will have a completely ice-free Arctic Ocean in September – Prof. Peter Wadhams (Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge) Right now in the Pacific we've got the El Niño and the temperature anomaly off South America is as high as 5.7°C. It's unprecedented even for El Niño. We have the warm blob off Alaska. Half way down to the equator we have another one off California. They are conducive to generating large cyclones/typhoons. Some of them head north following the jet streams. They can be carried up into the Arctic, where they further disintegrate the sea ice. If the sea ice extent gets down to 1 million square kilometers then it will all disappear. In one week in 2012 because of the cyclone the ice cover decreased about a million square kilometers. A couple of big cyclones can transport all of that slush out of that region. It's very likely that we'll have a „blue ocean” event – no sea ice at the end of the melt season – before 2020. That's what this year is showing. Foto: Flickr.com / by Christopher.Michel Source: http://www.truth-out.org
7 For the sake of the round numbers let's say the first „blue ocean” happens in 2020. In the first year the open Arctic Ocean state will only last for a few weeks. The ice will refreeze in the winter but there won't be as much. By 2022 the „blue ocean” event will occur maybe for August, September and October. And then, given another two or three years, there'll be no sea ice for about five or six months of the year. Within a decade, before 2030, because of the positive feedbacks there'll be no sea ice year around in the Arctic. Without sea ice there'll be no latent heat cooling of the Arctic region anymore so the heat levels will soar. Methane emissions from the submarine permafrost of the Arctic Ocean will escalate considerably. ” An abrupt release of 50 billion tonnes of methane from Arctic clathrates is highly possible at any time – Dr. Natalia Shakova (researcher of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf; leader of the Russia-U.S. Methane Study at the International Arctic Research Center) The temperature and pressure were sufficient in the past to create a kind of crystal chamber from the frozen water molecules. At its center there is a methane molecule. It's trapped. As the temperature rises and the water molecules melt the methane is released. Methane escaping from these clathrates poses a great planetary threat. If you apply a 20 year timescale, its global warming potential is 86 times stronger than CO 2 's. On a few year timescale it's 150/200 times more potent than CO 2 . Its levels are rising exponentially. When a pulse of methane comes out from the seabed, it's going to take at least a decade to decay. As the Arctic for a large part of the year sees dry conditions, the methane stays circulating up there in high concentrations. It takes a while to disperse over the rest of the planet. The Arctic will bake. Which means accelerated melting of Greenland and rapid sea level rise. ” During the late Eemian – about 121,000 years ago – the sea level rose as high as 2 to 3 meters in a few decades – autors of a study published 23 July 2015 in "Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics”. In this year's landmark study titled „Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2°C global warming is highly dangerous” a team of scientists led by James Hansen (the former head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; translator's note) present evidence from the paleorecords that the enormous catastrophic sea level rise was due to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) slowdown. It caused an increase in the Southern Ocean heat which triggered calving (detachment) of ice shelves, increased ice cap melt and sea level rise in non-linear rates. Also, this generated large cool areas of water which in turn led to large temperature gradients. However, the warmer water brought large pressure differences and storms where winds were 10% or 20% stronger than today; they caused massive persistent long waves which according to the geological evidence (e.g., in Bahamas) reached 30 meters in height. Recent data collected from various sources suggest that the temperature then was only a few tens of a degree warmer than today – 0.2°C or 0.3°C. We're almost there. A paper by Stefan Rahmstorf et al. released in March of this year demonstrates that the ocean circulation is slowing down. The present rates at which things are happening are incomparably faster because atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are higher. I've recently asked a question: Can sea level rise around seven meters by 2070? If you look at the 7-year doubling period for melt rate of Greenland and Antarctica in the last two decades and carry that forward you come up with roughly 7 meters by 2070. ” The changes occurring in major glaciers in the polar regions are staggering. I personally view the IPCC AR5 sea level rise projections as unrealistically low – Prof. Eric Rignot (glaciologist and principal scientist for the Radar Science and Engineering Section at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory) The climate estimates in the models are always off the mark. They become the basis for a prediction but within a few years the doubling rate has changed and it becomes necessary to make a new forecast. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) model of course looks at a linear case. They estimate up to 0,74 meter sea level rise by 2100. There is no rational reason to assume linear rise in ice melt and sea level rise, especially since we haven't seen it over the last 20 years. And we have ample evidence which confirm that it is already a non-linear process. Perhaps the rate will slow down in Greenland but if the Arctic sea ice goes, I can't see that happening either. The Amundsen Sea glaciers in the West Antarctic can rise the sea level by several meters. The Totten Glacier System in the Aurora Subglacial Basin region in East Antarctica has the potential for 6-7 meters of sea level rise. So ice mass loss of Greenland, West Antarctic and the Aurora Basin in East Antarctica are definitely growing in a non-linear fashion. Let's consider the accurate data from NASA's GRACE satellites. The Arctic ice loss from Greenland on average has been about 287 gigatonnes per year over the last decade. A few years ago the temperature on the ice was above zero over 95/96% of the entire surface of the island. Antarctica has lost about 134 gigatonnes per year on average over the same period. A gigatonne is a billion tonnes. The total combined losses, which contribute to sea level rise, are about 5 trillion tonnes since 2002. What does a trillion mean? Imagine an 18-kilometer high ice cube. Top of the atmosphere where weather occurs is about 11 km. This ice cube would extend quite far into space. ” The process of communicating about climate change has utterly failed. Neither the public, nor the majority of government officials care about it – Dr Chris Shaw, (inter-disciplinary researcher at the University of Sussex; specialist in communication of climate change). The effects on humanity of the Arctic temperature amplification, methane emissions, the jet stream waviness and sea level rise will be devastating. As the planet undergoes this dramatic transition human civilization will sink into tragic turmoil and conflict. The extreme weather events will prompt desperate attempts to adapt and mitigate. Dwindling supplies of fresh water and food will bring down governments and many countries will declare martial law. Wherever you go in the world you're going to see signs of rapid climate change. People don't see the connections or refuse to see them. Around 6 years ago, before I started University of Ottawa, I used to prepare e-mails called „State of the Planet”. I obtained the e-mail addresses of all members of the Parliament of Canada, Provincial Parliament and city councils. I would list all the extreme weather events occurring and send them to hundreds of politicians. They were mostly ignored. People don't want to hear it. People are not risk savvy. They worry about the wrong things, meanwhile they are going to be submerged by rising seas or hit by food and water shortages. M.Rz. / Source: paulbeckwith.net Foto: Flickr.com / by Christopher.Michel Large fires in the Arctic In order to convert one gram of ice at 0°C to 1 milliliter of water you need slightly more than 79 calories. But once the ice is converted to water, adding the same amount of energy increases the temperature of the water to slightly more than 79°C. Now imagine this process on the scale of the Arctic Ocean. Source: http://www.climatecentral.org, http://www.nature.com El Nińo It is an abnormal weather pattern that is caused by the warming of the Pacific Ocean near the equator, off the coast of South America. This occurs when the normal trade winds weaken (or even reverse), which lets the warm water that is usually found in the western Pacific flow instead towards the east. This warm water displaces the cooler water that is normally found near the surface of the eastern Pacific, setting off atmospheric changes that affect weather patterns in many parts of the world. A temperature increase of least 0,5°C needs to occur in the waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean near the equator for it to be considered an El Nińo year. Although El Nińo does not occur in a perfectly regular pattern, it seems to happen every 2 to 7 years. Following an El Nińo, an opposite phenomenon occurs, called La Nińa. During La Nińa, the eastern Pacific Ocean experiences cooler than normal temperatures around the equator . Recent research suggests that El Nińo patterns could now occur twice as frequently, and that 'normal' conditions might become more similar to those of El Nińo. Source: http://study.com, http://www.nature.com Positive feedback It is a process in which an initial change will bring about an additional change in the same direction. There are also negative feedbacks, processes in which an initial change will bring about an additional change in the opposite direction. It is positive, rather than negative feedbacks that contribute to abrupt climate changes. In positive feedbacks, a small initial perturbation can yield a large change. Example: Once ice begins to melt and uncover land or water, more solar radiation is absorbed by the surface, raising temperatures and causing even more ice to melt. This positive feedback might act more quickly over the oceans than over land because sea ice can melt faster than large continental ice sheets. Scientific literature have already identified a few dozen positive self-reinforcing climate feedbacks. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov
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Page 3 and 4: 3 ZMIANY KLIMATU: CZY JEST GORZEJ N
Page 5: 5 Gwoli zachowania okrągłych licz
Page 9 and 10: 9 Klimat a dobra wspólne Marcin Wr
Page 11 and 12: 11 Żywność A ZMIANA KlimatU Jan
Page 13 and 14: 13 Przyroda a zmiany klimatu - kto
Page 15 and 16: 15 Zmiany klimatyczne - od postrzeg
Page 17 and 18: 17 Porozumienia handlowe i ochrona
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Page 23 and 24: 23 La face noire du charbon Wojciec
Page 25 and 26: 25 Niemcy przeciw TTIP Piotr Trzask
Page 27 and 28: 27 Rozmowa z Orlando von Einsiedele
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Page 33 and 34: 33 Eartship w Ariège Od warzywnika
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Page 37 and 38: 37 POROZUMIENIE PARYSKIE A KLIMATYC
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Page 41 and 42: 41 ISSN 1898-8717 08 ZIELONE WIADOM

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