science of climate change

• ADAPTATION: Actions to reduce vulnerability to climate change and adapting to life in a changing climate
• Anthropogenic Sources of Carbon Dioxide Emissions:

  • production
  • land use land cover change
  • deforestation
  • burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas)
• climate : The long-term average of weather patterns
• Climate of the Philippines:

  • tropical and maritime climate
  • relatively high temperature and humidity
  • with seasonal and spatial variability in rainfall
• Climate? Pattern of atmospheric conditions in one place over long periods of time
• components of disaster risk:

  • Hazard
  • Vulnerability
  • Exposure
• Disaster: A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society at any scale due to hazardous events interacting with conditions of exposure, vulnerability, and capacity, leading to one or more of the following: human, material, economic, and environmental losses and impacts.
• Earth’s Atmospheric Gases: NitrogenOxygenWaterCarbon dioxideMethane
• EXPOSURE:

  • inventory of elements in an area wherein hazards may occur
  • people and economic activities that are exposed to hazard
• Factors that define whether a disaster occurs as a result of a natural hazard:

  • living conditions and poverty
  • government capacity to prepare and respond
  • process of rebuilding and how efficient that would be
• Factors that influence an area's weather:

  • Latitude
  • Altitude
  • Geography
• Fators influencing an area's climate:

  • location
  • large scale climate system (ENSO)
• Greenhouse gases: WaterCarbon dioxideMethane
• Hazard: potential occurrence of a natural or human-induced physical event that may cause adverse effects on a given area
• Impacts of climate change:

  • Climatologists monitor:
  • Temperature
  • Precipitation
  • Sea-level rise
  • Ocean and atmospheric currents
  • Incident solar radiation
  • Clouds
  • Water budget in the biosphere and atmosphere
• Keep temperatures from rising higher than 1.5 degrees: global emissions reduced to 45% by 2030cut to 0% by 2050
• Limit to 1.5° C:

  sea level rise heat waves drought biodiversity coral reefs
• MITIGATION


  Actions to reduce and curb greenhouse emissions and stabilizing the levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
• Natural Greenhouse Effect

  • Naturally occurring concentrations of atmospheric gases trap enough heat from the sun to sustain life 
  • The balance between radiated and trapped heat
• Natural Sources of Carbon Dioxide Emissions

  • decomposition of vegetation
  • ocean release
  • volcanic eruptions
  • naturally occurring wildfires
  • respiration
• Non-Greenhouse Gases


  NitrogenOxygen
• Paris agreement in 2015

  • United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC)
  • 195 parties signed
  • efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5° C (2.7° F) above pre-industrial levels
• RISK formula

  HAZARDS X EXPOSURE X VULNERABILITY
• Role of the Atmosphere

  • protects us from harmful ultraviolet solar radiation
  • warms the planet
  • prevents extremes between day and night temperatures
  • keeps the Earth habitable
• Type 1 climate:

  Two pronounced seasons:

  1. a wet season from May to October d
  2. ry season from November to April
• Type 2 climate

  1. pronounced peak in the wet season from November to December
  2. without a defined dry season
• type 3 climate

  1. no pronounced seasonal cycle
  2. relatively high rainfall from May to October, similar to Type I
• type 4 climate

  rainfall more or less distributed throughout the year
• VULNERABILITY

  • susceptibility of exposed elements
  • deals with sensitivity and lack of capacities and resilience of those exposed to cope with hazards and respond to potential disasters
• Warmer planet can disrupt the balance:


  TemperaturePrecipitationSea-level riseOcean and atmospheric currentsIncident solar radiationCloudsWater budget in the biosphere and atmosphere
• weather


  Condition of the atmosphere on a day-to-day basis
• what determines if a natural hazard is a disaster? 


  location
• What is climate change?

  A change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods
• when does a disaster happen?


  when a hazard impacts vulnerable populations