Natural Hazards and Disasters

Class 11: Modern Climate Change

Class slides

Modern Climate Change

Comparing the last 50 to 100 years to a long-term baseline derived from the Holocene, it is obvious that flows in the Earth's life-support system have changed dramatically due to human interventions. Some flows are hundred to more than a thousand time higher now than on average during the Holocene. The energy imbalance of the Earth system also has changed dramatically. As a result, climate has started to change much faster than ever before as documented by data. The prognosis of how climate is going to change over the next century and beyond poses a threat to humanity and many non-human animals.

Class Reading List:

Please, read the Executive Summary of this report:
USGCRP, 2017: Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume I [Wuebbles, D.J., D.W. Fahey, K.A. Hibbard, D.J. Dokken, B.C. Stewart, and T.K. Maycock (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, 470 pp. https://science2017.globalchange.gov/.

Plag, H.-P., 2018. Climate change: A symptom of a single-species, high-energy pulse. Column 19 in “On The Edge.” ApoGeoSpatial, 33(2), Spring 2018, 13-15. html.

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