Global

warming and
climate
change

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 Weather and Climate
Weather is what’s happening
now or over some short time
period—this hour, today, this
week—in the atmosphere near
the ground: its temperature,
pressure, cloudiness,
precipitation, winds.

Climate is the average weather and usually refers to average

weather conditions over long periods, at least seasons, but
more often years or decades.

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 Earth’s Energy Budget
Earth’s atmosphere
reflects about 30% of
the electromagnetic
(radiant) energy that
comes in from the
sun and absorbs
about 25%. The
remaining 45% gets
to the Earth’s
surface.
As the surface warms up, it radiates more energy back to the
atmosphere, which absorbs some of it. The warmed atmosphere
radiates some of its energy upward into outer space and some
downward to the Earth’s
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surface. 3
 The Greenhouse Effect

The greenhouse effect keeps Earth’s lower atmosphere

approximately 33°C warmer than it would otherwise be and
performs other important service functions as well.
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 Major Green House Gases
 Most natural green house warming is due to water in the
atmosphere, water vapour and water droplets produce
around 85% and 12% of the total green house warming
respectively

 The green house causes resulting in un-natural global

warming result from anthropogenic sources and include:
Carbon dioxide, CFC’s, methane, nitrous oxides and
ozone

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The size of each piece of the pie represents the amount
of warming that each gas is currently causing in the
atmosphere as a result of emissions from people's
activities.
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 Sources

Total U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions in 2012

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 Climate variability vs climate change
 Climate variability refers to “variations in the mean state and
other statistics (such as standard deviations, statistics of extremes,
etc.) of the climate on all temporal and spatial scales beyond that of
individual weather events” (IPCC, 2007, p. 872).

 Climate change refers to any change in climate over time due to

natural or anthropogenic reasons (IPCC, 2007).

 Climate change differs from climate variability in the

sense that the former is “a statistically significant variation in
either the mean state of the climate or in its variability,
persisting for an extended period, typically decades or longer”
(IPCC, 2012, p. 5).
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 Effects of global warming
includes:

 Changes in climate

 Rise in Sea Level

 Glacier retreats and Ice Cap

melting

 Changes in the Biosphere

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 Climate change in Bangladesh
 Bangladesh is regarded as one of the most climate
vulnerable countries in the world.
 Vulnerability = Impact- adaptive capacity
 Its vulnerability is due to its
 physiographic and climatic conditions (of the total land area,
79% has less than 1m elevation; sub-tropical climate)
 socioeconomic conditions
 poor infrastructure
 high livelihood dependence on natural resources.

Considering the impacts and vulnerability, Bangladesh is

considered asKBs;
a ‘climate
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change hotspot’ (World Bank, 2013) 11
Past climate change scenarios and related
impacts in Bangladesh
 Temperature (since 1960)
Increase in 0.24°C per decade during the hot season of March to May
and 0.19°C per decade during the cool season of December to February
 Rainfall (from 1958-2007)
Increase in annual and pre-monsoon rainfall as 5.53 and 2.47 mm/year,
respectively
 Cyclone
Between 1985-2009 an increased frequency of cyclonic storms (5.48
annually) was experienced in the Bay of Bengal.
 Sea level
Sea level has risen (1.5-5.6mm/year) along the Bangladeshi coast over
the past 60 years.

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 Future climate change scenarios and related impacts in
Bangladesh
• Temperature
 3 – 3.5°C increase in temperature by 2100
• Rainfall
 20% increase in rainfall in the north; 5 – 10% increase in rainfall for
the rest of the country by 2100
 Sea level rise
 By 2030 – 14cm
 By 2050 - 32 cm
 By 2100 – 88cm to 1m
 Extreme Temperature and Drought
 North and North-western regions of the country will suffer from
Extreme Temperature and drought

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 Future climate change scenarios and related impacts in
Bangladesh
 Cyclones
 may increase or decrease
 Floods
 Increase in temperatures, sea level and the number of summer precipitation
events and cyclones will result in higher intensity and frequency of floods.
With a global temperature rise of 2°C, the flooded area in Bangladesh will
rise by at least 23-29% more than today
 Land erosion
 Will increase both in coastal areas (due to storm surge and sea level rise) and
inland areas (due to higher summer rainfall and Himalayas ice melt)
 Salinity
 Will increase in coastal areas due to storm surge and sea level rise
 Disease
 Incidence of disease such as dengue and malaria will increase in tropical
countries

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General climate related impacts in
Bangladesh
 In Bangladesh, climate variability and change has reversed much of the
development, achieved in the past 20 years (ADB, 2009) and they are
anticipated to harm future development (Rahman et al., 2007). For
example, a sea level rise of 1m by the end of the century may reduce the
country’s GDP by 57 % (ADB, 2009).
 From 1980 to 2000, a total of 250,000 deaths were associated with tropical
cyclones around the world, of which 60% occurred in coastal Bangladesh
(IPCC, 2007). One of the most devastating cyclones and associated storm-
surge-induced floods killed 300,000 people in coastal Bangladesh in 1970
(IPCC, 2007).
 The number of deaths as a result of floods has considerably decreased over
the past decades due to improved disaster preparedness and response
strategies, and higher levels of households’ adaptive capacity (Del Ninno et
al., 2001; Del Ninno et al., 2003).
 However, a large number of people are still at risk to climate change due to
various reasons.

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 Adjusting (or tackling or
addressing) to Climate Change
 Two separate options for addressing climate change:
mitigation and adaptation.
 Mitigation is defined as any anthropogenic
interventions that can either reduce the greenhouse gas
emissions or enhance their sinks (sequestration).
 Adaptation: Learn to live with climate change
because there is warming in the pipeline from
greenhouse gases already emitted.

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References for today’s lecture
BOTKIN, D. B. & KELLER, E.A. 2011.
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE: EARTH AS A LIVING
PLANET (Eighth Edition). JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC.

Internet

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