Few Definitions Relevant to Climate Change
This is a list of terms used when referring to climate change, these are most of the terms (but not all) you need to understand the conversations and the articles you are going to be have or read in the next few months in the runner up to COP21, the climate change summit taking place in Paris in December.
Carbon capture and storage (or sequestration) – Known by the acronym CCS it consists of
a number of different technologies
and processes for trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) and storing it. Where
it is stored varies depending on the technology provider. Some pump the
gas into existing oil wells to increase production. Some pump it into
underground saltwater aquifers. Some into sandstone formations. In all
cases the idea is the CO2 gets permanently trapped or sequestered.
Carbon capture use and storage – Known by the acronym
CCUS,
it describes initiatives by industry to turn captured CO2 into useful
commercial products. For example, captured CO2 is being added to
concrete to make it lighter and more durable. The benefit, the CO2 is
permanently sequestered. The
XPrize
initiative recently launched a $20 million prize to individuals and
businesses that come up with ways of capturing and converting CO2 for
commercial use.
Carbon sink – Usually the term refers to natural
environments that absorb CO2. Plants are the main carbon sink on our
planet. Ocean water acts as a carbon sink with and in absorbing CO2
becomes more acidic. Marine plant life, phytoplankton and algae play a
significant role in absorbing the gas. The soil is a carbon sink. When
you combine all of these natural sources they absorb almost 50% of the
emissions produced by humans today.
Climate change – This term refers to the record of
change that has occurred in climate patterns both in the past and
present. The geologic record shows many periods in Earth history where
the global climate was different from today. The evidence that shows us
climate change can be found in sedimentary rocks, polar and alpine
glaciers, tree rings and soil. Through physical evidence we can
determine changes in temperature, precipitation, and seasonal
distribution. See human climate change below for additional information.
The determination on whether what is being observed is or is not
climate change is solely based on duration. If observed data shows
changes lasting multiple decades or longer then it falls under climate
change.
Climate change adaptation – We hear this term more
and more. It refers to how we are adjusting to climate change as a
global society. For example, as ocean sea level rises, coastal cities
are implementing infrastructure changes. These include restoring
wetlands, expanding floodplains, building seawalls, berms and levees. To
combat rising temperatures businesses, institutions, government and
home owners are improving internal climate control within structures.
People are altering the clothes they wear to reflect a changing climate.
We are switching from fossil-fuel burning technologies to ones that
minimize our carbon footprint. Electric and hydrogen fuel cell cars
represent climate change adaptation and mitigation, which takes us to
our next definition.
Climate change mitigation – This one is the simplest
to understand. Mitigation involves reducing fossil fuel consumption. It
involves ending deforestation and planting trees to replace the ones we
have lost. It involves using technologies that minimize our carbon
footprint such as virtual offices and telecommuting. It includes CCS
(see definition above). It could include geoengineering (see definition
below).
Climate variability – Many of those aspiring to the
leadership of the Republican Party in the United States talk about
natural climate variability in dismissing human-related climate change.
They argue that climate is always changing and variability will always
occur. Climate varies over seasons and years. Climate varies because of
geography. For example the eastern part of North America experienced
prolonged cold in the last two winters while western parts of North
America experienced abnormal heat and drought. Globally mean
temperatures set records. The politicians used the freeze in the east to
“prove” that human-induced climate change was a canard.
COP21 Paris – The COP refers to Conference of the
Parties who are members of the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (see description below). The Paris meeting is designated
the 21st in the series, hence COP21.
Copenhagen Accord – In December 2009 the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change members met in Denmark at
COP15 in a meeting focused on setting a long-term goal to ensure that
global warming did not exceed 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) degrees.
Participants committed to announcing 2020 emission targets for all
greenhouse gases. Actions and oversight were left to the individual
participants themselves rather than a global group. Developed nations
agreed to provide funding to those nations in the Developing World
vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. A mechanism to promote
adaptation and mitigation technology was put in place. The agreement
reinstated the goals and aspirations first established at Kyoto under
its protocol.
Disaster risk reduction – Climate change, defined by
changing precipitation patterns, significantly higher and lower
temperatures and higher incidents of extreme weather, has been observed
across the planet for the last five decades. Most notable has been the
change in nighttime temperatures impacting energy use, agriculture and
weather. The impact on human society can be measured in many billions of
U.S. dollars annually. Through extrapolation and trend analysis
consequences can be measured. It is expected that:
- warmer conditions will impact human populations, particularly the elderly, young and chronically ill.
- warmer oceans will alter fish populations putting food sources at risk.
- rising sea levels combined with extreme weather events will lead to storm surges and the destruction of coastal communities.
- some areas receiving higher than normal precipitation may be subject
to landslides or floods with loss of life and infrastructure.
- changes in climate will impact agricultural production and cause tropical diseases to spread into more temperate climates.
- sea level rise will overwhelm low elevations island nations and coastlines.
Action taken to reduce these risks and their adverse impacts equals disaster risk reduction. In 2005, the
Hyogo Framework for Action was established by 168 countries to promote
global risk reduction strategies
to deal with future climate change. The Framework called for the
identification and monitoring of those deemed most vulnerable to
establish an early warning system while reducing underlying risk factors
to them. It also set as a goal standards for disaster preparedness.
Extreme weather events – Although not necessarily a
symptom of climate change, extreme weather events are the canary in the
coal mine. When one area of the planet experiences levels of heat never
encountered before this could be variability or climate change. But when
you see many parts of the planet suffering from extended heat waves in
which thousands of lives are at risk, particularly in Developing World
nations where climate controlled environments are few and far between,
then one must sit up and take notice. This summer when my wife and I
took a river cruise on the Danube in central Europe, an extended drought
caused water levels to drop significantly leaving us high and dry on
what is Europe’s second longest river. Daytime temperatures reached the
mid-30s Celsius (over 90 Fahrenheit). In North America with climate
control built into most buildings and homes a heat wave like the one we
experienced is manageable. But in Central Europe air conditioning is a
rarity and the sweltering conditions were of an extreme nature to say
the least
Geoengineering – Often described as climate
intervention, geoengineering is human manipulation of Earth’s systems.
The best example is rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere leading to the
phenomenon we call global warming. In this case the geoengineering is
unintentional but consequential. So if we can through human acts cause
warming why can’t we undo through the application of engineered
solutions.The most discussed include CCS and CCUS (described above) and
solar radiation management or SRM (see below). We have had proposals to
use a fleet of jet aircraft to dump fine sulfur particles into the upper atmosphere to block sunlight and cool the planet surface. Another proposal would
pump seawater into the air
from a hundred funnels located on ships moored in the Arctic to
increase cloud cover and therefore minimize land and sea ice, and
permafrost melt.
Global warming – The term most associated with the
reason for the upcoming Paris conference, it refers to average global
temperatures on the rise and attributes this to a greenhouse effect
produced by rising levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere.
Greenhouse gases – These are gases that absorb infrared light
converting it to heat. CO2 is the gas most associated with human-induced
climate change, but methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, water vapour, sulfur
dioxide and sulfur hexaflouride all contribute to global warming.
Human climate change – Human fingerprints are all
over the planet when studying climate change. Indicators include the
volume of CO2 entering the atmosphere from human activity. This amounts
to approximately 30 billion tons per year today. Our fingerprint can be
found in temperature data showing nights are getting significantly
warmer as the added CO2 absorbs solar radiation converting it to heat.
We have been measuring CO2 increases in the air, approximately a 60%
rise from the beginning of the 20th century to today. We can measure
decreases in oxygen in our air. We have satellites that measure that
heat loss to space from our planet is in decline. We measure rising
ocean temperatures as the warmer atmosphere interacts with surface
water.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) –
Established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the
United Nations, this body reviews, assesses and reports on the latest
scientific information of importance to understand climate change. Its
reports are based on published peer-reviewed scientific and technical
literature with a goal to inform national governments and the public on
climate-related issues. The first report was issued in 1990 and
subsequently reports have appeared each year updating the science. The
IPCC consists of working groups to review the enormous quantity of
research it receives. Two co-chairs head the working groups, one from a
Developed nation and the other from a Developing World nation. The
reports are peer reviewed involving thousands from science, industry and
non-government sources.
Kyoto Protocol – In 1992 the nation members of the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change met in Kyoto,
Japan and drafted an international legally binding agreement that set
emission reduction targets for all participants. Canada is the only
Developed nation to opt out of its commitments made at Kyoto. It did
this in 2011 to save the government from having to pay $14 billion in
penalties for not achieving its targeted greenhouse gas emissions. The
agreement expired in 2012.
Ocean acidification – The world ocean is a carbon
sink and the CO2 it uptakes is altering its chemistry. The measure of
acidity is defined by the pH scale. 7.0 is neutral. 8.0 is alkaline. 6.0
is acid. For the past 300 million years the ocean pH has been 8.2. In
the past 150 years since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the
level has dropped to 8.1. As the ocean absorbs more CO2 pH is expected
to drop further to as low as 7.7 by 2100. For ocean life attempting to
adapt to such a drastic pH level change the implications are dire. A
more acidic ocean will impact all shelled creatures including corals,
bivalves, snails, zooplankton and crustaceans (crabs, lobsters, shrip,
krill, etc.).
Sea level rise – In the last week alone a
number of articles
have come out citing sea level rise as being a significant threat to
coastal cities such as New Orleans and Miami. A rise of close to a meter
(just under 40 inches) which NASA believes is unavoidable will be
devastating to low elevation urban coastal centres. With the world
community targeting global warming to not exceed 2 degrees Celsius it is
anticipated that ocean levels will rise much higher than a meter and
that hundreds of millions will be climate refugees. For example, if the
oceans rise four to five meters almost every coastal urban centre in the
United States will find itself under water.
Solar radiation management – Known by the acronym
SRM, this form of geoengineering addresses reflecting sunlight back into
space to reduce global warming. Only a small amount of inbound solar
energy need be reflected to create significant cooling state those who
seek to launch pilot projects to prove the efficacy of this type of
geoengineering. Sulfate particles in the stratosphere, the spraying of
seawater into the upper troposphere and similar schemes have been
suggested.
Unintended consequences
could lead to increased ocean acidification, changes to precipitation
patterns, and increased frequency of extreme weather events.
Sustainable Development – This term is in common use
these days. It refers to economic development in the present that
doesn’t compromise the future. Sustainable development balances social,
economic and environmental objectives.
Sustainable development is complicated
because what is needed locally in the present often has negative
consequences for the future or conflicts with other societies in the
present. Cut down a tree in present day Africa to provide fuel for your
family for heating and cooking and the consequences of the act can be
measured in the future with changes to soil moisture levels, water
tables, erosion and sequestered carbon.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – Founded in 1994 it has 195 countries as members. Its
focus
is to prevent human interference with Earth’s climate by stabilizing
greenhouse gas emissions and to do this within a time frame
“sufficient
to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change. to ensure
that food production is not threatened, and to enable economic
development to proceed in a sustainable manner.”
If missing terms that need to be defined please let me know in your comments.
Source: http://www.21stcentech.com/primer-terms-related-climate-change/
