The earth is warming in the context of climate change, rapidly. The result of two worrying Trends are: The seasons are shifting and the nights are warming at twice the Rate as the days. This poses a great danger to the health.
This is the “face of climate change”. The prominent climatologist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, the British “Guardian” said in an Interview about the current global heat wave. Now the global warming impact “in real time”. You are standing behind the extreme weather that lasts for many weeks in almost all regions of the world.
Not only high temperatures, which called for a few hundred deaths, fires, or droughts are the consequences of climate change, but also a shift in the seasons as well as changes in seasonal temperatures. In addition, the pattern of daily temperatures converts: The nights are warming at twice the Rate as the days, which has a direct effect on human health. According to climatologist Michael Mann, the “face of climate change”.
Change in the seasonal temperature cycle
In a study that appeared in the “science journal “Science”, discovered of the American climatologists, the seasonal temperature cycle in the troposphere changed considerably. The troposphere is the lower layer of the earth’s atmosphere, ranging in height between 13 and 16 kilometers. The most of the weather processes.
As indicated, amplifies the climate change, the temperature difference between the hot summers and cold winters. The temperatures rise in summer stronger than in all other seasons of the year. Particularly pronounced is the difference in the Northern hemisphere, because it has significantly more land mass than the southern hemisphere of the earth. There, the water masses of the oceans to buffer the seasonal variations.
The human influence on the climate of the earth
Between 40 and 60 degrees North latitude in the summer, have been since the beginning of satellite records 38 years ago to a tenth of a degree Celsius per decade warmer than the Winter. This could have an impact on the agriculture in these mid-Latitudes, where much of the food crops is grown. Because higher summer temperatures, the soils will dry out faster.
Beyond the 60. Latitude – he runs, among other things, through St. Petersburg, and below the southern tip of Greenland – reversed the Trend. There, the winters will warm more than the summer, allowing for the formation of sea ice each year has less and less time. “Our study, which examines the change in the seasonal temperature cycle, provides new and strong evidence on the impact of humans on the earth’s climate,” says study lead author Benjamin Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
Santer and his colleagues used temperature measurement data collected by satellite in the world. This compared with data from computer models. Some of them are calculated, such as the temperature of the earth would have developed without the influence of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions. The difference between the measured and calculated values of the climatologists as a “human fingerprint” in the Climate system. Other models that included the greenhouse effect, provided the same temperature values as the satellites. “We show that the human fingerprint is much greater than our best estimates of natural climate variability,” explains Santer.
Winter to four weeks shorter than fifty years ago
Earlier studies had shown that climate change affects the seasons of the year. So spring begins in the middle of almost two weeks earlier. The Bavarian state office for the environment found that the vegetation period from 1961 to 2010 per decade increased by 5.1 days, which added up to 26 days.
Consequently, the winters are, on average, around four weeks shorter than fifty years ago. This affects the biological diversity. Some time ago, the Federal office for nature conservation, 63 out of 500 in Germany strictly protected fauna species classified as a “high-risk types. Are affected, among other things, the Golden Plover, the Alpine Salamander and the blue iridescent fire moth. All are now rare, and react very sensitively to global warming.
Warm summer nights can cool down the body at night
The people, a change sets in the night-time temperatures. Measurements in the United States showed that the summer heated nights in the train of climate change at twice the Rate as the days, namely by 0.8 degrees Celsius in the past century, compared with 0.4 degrees Celsius during the days.
Especially Old and sick and small children in danger by this development. “The combination of high day and night temperatures can be fatal, because the body can no longer cool down in the nights,” explained the Epidemiologist Lara Cushing of the San Francisco State University.
Increased sleep disturbances due to high night temperatures
Overall, global warming is increasingly affecting our sleep. A in 2017, in the science journal “Science Advances published study found that higher night-time temperatures especially in the summer, increased sleep disturbances. By 2050 alone could suffer, in North America, millions of people including – and much more in the poorer tropical countries. In this case, older people are affected twice as often as younger.
A one degree Celsius above Normal temperature resulted in an average of three sleepless nights and more per month and 100 people. “Extrapolated to the Population of the USA, this results in approximately 110 million sleepless nights and more per year, according to study lead author Nick Obradovich from the Harvard University in Cambridge (US-Massachusetts).
“Too little sleep can make people more susceptible to infections and chronic diseases, but also his mood and mental performance.” By 2050, six bedroom could be added lots of nights until 2099 14 nights without sleep. Poor people, according to the study, suffer three times more heat-related sleep disorders than the Rich. Because the latter often live in the cooler suburbs and can afford air conditioners.
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Air conditioners strain the power supply
However, their use has its limits: in may, the U.S. called on energy suppliers to NERC its customers to limit electricity use during peak consumption times in order to obtain the supply. Is particularly affected California. There, the grid operator CAISO recently warned that the hottest days of the expected demand for electricity could exceed the production capacity of about 5000 megawatts, especially because the air conditioners run on high tours.
Fuels from fossil fuels to global warming drives more
In a recent Report, the International energy Agency reported in Paris, that already a tenth of the world’s consumption of electricity flows in air conditioning systems and fans. Because in developing countries, more and more people could be cooling systems, will increase their consumption by 2050, triple.
A new infrastructure would have to occur, as much electricity is produced as it is today, all power plants in the EU, the USA and Japan. The energy would be generated with fossil, will begin a vicious cycle: The greenhouse gas emissions from the cooling burn fuels ahead drives global warming.