Following the abnormally warm weather (on May 2, the air temperature in Moscow warmed up to 25.6 degrees), the same abnormal cooling occurred. For several days, starting from May 8, the air does not warm up above 10 degrees Celsius. Is this weather a consequence of global warming, why is the Earth's temperature rising, who can be behind climate change and what kind of weather anomalies should we expect this year.
Photo: m24.ru / Lydia Shironina
Global warming as an engine of progress
Contrary to popular belief that global warming is a fairly new phenomenon, scientists argue that the temperature on Earth began to rise already in the 19th century. And the reason for this lies in the increasingly active economic activity of man.
For example, three centuries ago no one could be surprised by the fact that the Thames froze over: judging by the engravings of that period, fairs and ice skating were held on the river. Now it is such a rare occurrence that it is considered an anomaly that causes panic among local residents. The Arctic ice cap began to decline at the beginning of the 20th century. However, it was this that made the appearance of the northern sea route possible.
But, scientists believe, warming reached its apogee in 1920–1930 - it was at this time that a number of climatic changes took place, which significantly affected the entire ecosystem of the planet. So, the temperature on Svalbard (this is part of the polar archipelago located in the Arctic Ocean) increased by an average of 5 degrees - because of this, it became possible to conduct economic activities there. In the Greenland Sea, the thickness of the ice cover has decreased by half, and in the Barents Sea - by 30 percent. These phenomena led to the fact that both seas became accessible for shipping.
Photo: TASS / Zuma / Mike King
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At the same time, the permafrost boundary began to recede everywhere, and the temperature of the frozen ground increased by 1.5-2 degrees. Warming has led to the fact that droughts have become commonplace in the territories of the Soviet Union and "reached" America. The flora and fauna have changed in whole areas.
However, already in the 1940s, climatic trends began to change - a cold snap began. And the warming that was observed just a couple of decades ago, experts called it nothing more than an anomaly that has no global prospects. During this period, the glaciers in the Caucasus mountains practically ceased to melt, the ice boundary in the Arctic began to shift southward, and it became noticeably colder on Svalbard.
The sea is worried once
The world's oceans are to blame for what is happening to the atmosphere. The fact is that the water in the ocean warms up unevenly - in shallow water the temperature can reach 36 degrees, but at the greatest depth it does not exceed zero degrees. In order to heat all this mass of water, you must try very hard. For example, if the atmosphere of the Earth, due to human activity, heats up by 1 degree, then the ocean temperature will increase by a minuscule value - only 0.001 degrees. Therefore, even with a very active emission of carbon dioxide and dust into the atmosphere (this is what leads to an increase in temperature), the ocean will warm up extremely slowly - it will be prevented by melting of glaciers and a very great depth, which generates icy streams of water.
Photo: TASS / DPA / Spillner, G
The cold snap that occurred in the 1940s – 1950s was, oddly enough, warming. Due to the warmed up atmosphere, air masses over the ocean began to actively move. The wind drove away the warm surface layer in a certain place, and instead of it, ice streams rose from the ocean, which were then mixed with warm ones. Actually, this mixing of water led to a decrease in temperature on the ocean surface and, as a consequence, a decrease in atmospheric temperature. Curiously, even if the temperature drops, the ocean continues to heat up, albeit by minuscule values.
Carbon dioxide
The main reason why the atmosphere heats up, and then the World Ocean begins to "wave", is the greenhouse effect. It, in turn, is created due to the emission of carbon dioxide, which is precisely related to human activities. During the industrial era, the content of this gas in the atmosphere increased by more than a third.
Another factor influencing the warming of the atmosphere is the so-called heat caps over cities - the larger the settlement, the warmer it is above it. And that very beautiful twinkling on the Earth's surface that we see when looking at images from space is a real sign of a climate threat.
But, be that as it may (if we do not take into account the apocalyptic forecasts of some experts), even if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rises so much that it leads to warming by 5-10 degrees, wait until it really affects the weather outside the window, it will take more than one decade.
What will happen next
In general, scientists agree that in the next few years we are threatened not so much by a sharp warming as by a change in the structure of the climate as a whole. These changes are characterized by a large number of weather anomalies, which, in fact, we are already observing.
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the past year was the warmest in the history of meteorological observations: the average temperature was 1.1 degrees higher. However, the temperature has risen by an average of one degree since 2001. Even such insignificant (in the opinion of the layman) changes have already led to serious consequences. The researchers believe that it was climate change that caused the fires in Canada, the rains in California and the earthquakes in Italy in 2016.
As for the prospects for this year, the forecasts of scientists are disappointing. According to experts, climatic changes in the Arctic, active melting of glaciers will lead to a shift in the broader structures of oceanic and atmospheric circulation, which will seriously affect the weather in different parts of the planet.
Such processes, scientists predict, by the end of the 21st century may lead to the fact that about five million Europeans will lose their homes due to floods.
Anomalies have already been recorded in the winter of 2017 and there will be more of them further, experts warn. According to WMO, a "polar equivalent of a heat wave" has been observed in the Arctic at least three times. This phenomenon was caused by the influx of warm humid air due to powerful Atlantic storms. Almost 12 thousand temperature records were recorded in February in America. Australia suffered from prolonged and extreme heat waves in January-February, and in parts of the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa there were unusually severe cold.
Interestingly, the temperature of the surface air layer in Russia is growing 2.5 times faster than in the world as a whole. This conclusion follows from the report of the Roshydrometeorological Center "On the peculiarities of the climate in the territory of the Russian Federation in 2016". It has become especially warmer in the Arctic: in Taimyr, the temperature has increased by 0.8 degrees over 10 years.
The result of these processes was the abnormal weather that we observed in December last year, when several temperature records were broken at once. In addition, 2016 became the absolute record holder for the number of dangerous meteorological events, including those that caused damage. There were 590 cases of heat, frost, strong winds and precipitation, as well as frost and snowstorms. A year earlier, there were 570, and 10-15 years ago - 150-400. There is no data for this year, of course, but, apparently, the current abnormal weather is a continuation of last year's trends.
Convenient truth
According to the conspiracy theory, there are very specific forces behind global climate change. This is the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, an American research program for the study of the ionosphere and auroral lights, which was launched in 1997 in Alaska and closed in 2014. HAARP has been accused of not only turning off satellites, controlling the minds of people and being used as a weapon against terrorists, but also generating weather events on its own, causing earthquakes, droughts, hurricanes and floods. He is also believed to be the cause of the crash of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003.
In fact, HAARP is known to have studied the uppermost part of the atmosphere, called the ionosphere. The ionospheric profile is extremely difficult to study because it is very thin and variable. This profile becomes especially complex near the Earth's magnetic poles. Research in this area is aimed at the development of air and missile defense systems.
Al Gore, a former US vice president and rival of George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election, also attempted to "expose" the causes of global warming. According to Gore's theory (for which he received the Nobel Prize in 2007), which he outlined in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, not only scientific but also political factors are the cause of global warming. The politician's point of view is still disputed by some scholars. Another part of specialists generally considers Gore's conclusions pseudoscientific and unfounded. Gore's environmental agenda was also ignored by the majority of Americans who chose Bush Jr. as their president. However, he subsequently lost an impressive part of his electorate precisely because he did not pay due attention to the problem of global warming.
Elena Romashova
