GLOBAL DIMMING

A PROJECT REPORT

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE

REQURIMENT FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF

BACHELOR OF ARTS IN ECONOMICS

BY

DR.MARCUS BARLA,M.A.,M.PHIL,PH.D

TANYA CHANDRA-215

SUBRATA ROY -239

SUPRIYA -251

TULIKA RANI -274

DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

ST.XAVIER’S COLLEGE (AUTONOMOUS)

RANCHI-834001

GLOBAL DIMMING

BY

TANYA CHANDRA

SUBRATA ROY

SUPRIYA

TULIKA RANI

CONTENTS:

CERTIFICATE

DECLARATION OF THE CANDIDATES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

1. INTRODUCTION2. OBJECTIVES3. THE STUDY-DISCOVERY4. CAUSES OF GLOBAL DIMMING5. CONSEQUENCES6. DATA AND ANALYSIS7. REMIDIAL MEASURES8. SUMARY9. CONCLUSION10. REFERANCES11. APPENDICES

CERTIFICATE OF THE SUPERVISOR

THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT THE PROJECT REPORT ENTITLED,”GLOBAL DIMMING”, submitted by (TANYA CHANDRA,

TULIKA RANI, SUBRATA ROY, SUPRIYA) IS A RECORD OF ORIGINAL AND INDEPENDENT WORK BY THE CANDIDATES, DURING THE

PERIOD OF STUDY UNDER MY SUPERVISION AND GUIDANCE AND THAT THE PROJECT REPORT HAS NOT FORMED THE BASIS FOR

THE AWARD TO THE CANDIDATES OF ANY DEGREE, DIPLOMA OR OTHER SIMILAR TITLES

PLACE: RANCHI

DATE: 25-O3-20

DR MARCUS BARLA

M.A.,M.PHIL.,PH.D.

PROF. SHISHIR CHAUDHARY

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

ST.XAVIER’S COLLEGE,RANCHI-834001

DECLARATION OF CANDIDATES

This is to certify that the PROJECT REPORT entitled, ”GLOBAL DIMMING”, submitted by us is a record of original and independent work done by us during

this academic year 2009-10 under the supervision and guidance of DR.MARCUS BARLA,M.A.,M.PHIL.,PH.D. This PROJECT REPORT had not

formed the basis for the award of any DEGREE, DIPLOMA or any similar titles

SUPRIYA -251

SUBRATA ROY -239

TANYA CHANDRA-215

TULIKA RANI -274

PLACE: RANCHI

DATE: 25-03-2010

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTWe are extremely happy to record our very sincere gratitude, to all those who have helped us in accomplishing this PROJECT REPORT in several ways.

We gratefully acknowledge the tireless guiding and valuable suggestion offered at every stage of our work by DR.MARCUS BARLA, M.A.,M.PHIL.,PH.D., His contribution have been very substantial and helpful.

We thank PROF. S. CHAUDHARY, the Head of the Department of Economics, St. Xavier’s College, Ranchi for his academic assistance and encouragement.

We gratefully remember all the beloved faculty member of the Department of Economics for their valuable suggestions and encouragements.

We shall be failing in our duty if we do not thankfully mention the services of Fr. Principal, DR.N.TETE S.J., and Fr .c. de. Brower, S.J. and the library staffs of St. Xavier’s College, valuable respondents and Heads of various institutions.

Finally, we would like to thank our parents and class mates who have been of great help, a constant source of support and encouragement to us.

PLACE: RANCHI

DATE: 25-03-2010

Tanya Chandra-215

Subrata Roy -239

Supriya -251

Tulika Rani -274

INTRODUCTION:The study reveals that we may have grossly underestimated the speed at which our climate is changing. At its heart is a deadly new phenomenon. One that until very recently scientists refused to believe even existed. But it may already have led to the starvation of millions. Tonight Horizon examines for the first time the power of what scientists are calling Global Dimming. Evidence is gathering from all over the world which indicates that global radiation, which is the sum of direct solar radiation and the radiation diffusely scattered by the atmosphere, has been reduced over the last few decades. As a consequence, observations show that the rate of evaporation from open pans of water has been steadily decreasing over the past 50 years. This reduction must be due to changes in the atmosphere, the most obvious candidates being clouds and aerosols. The changes in the atmosphere are at least partly related to the burning of fossil fuels, which links the reduction of global radiation to the observed global warming. Global dimming could therefore be seen as a negative feedback to the process of global warming.

OBJECTIVES OF GLOBAL DIMMING TO BRING IT TO THE KNOWLEDGE OF PEOPLE AS IT IS A LESS

FAMILIAR CONCEPT THAN GLOBAL WARMING.

TO EMPHASIZE THE PRESENT DAY SCENARIO AS GLOBAL DIMMING IS UNDERCOVERING GLOBAL WARMING.

TO MENTION THAT THE WORLD IS NOT GOING TO BE A BALL OF HEAT BUT A TRAY OF ICE.

TO UNDERSTAND THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF GLOBAL DIMMING.

TO FIND OUT WHETHER A RECTIFICATION IN GLOBAL DIMMING CAN CURE GLOBAL WARMING.

TO COLLECT DATA ON THE EXTENT OF RISE IN GLOBAL DIMMING.

TO FIND OUT THE REMEDIAL MEASURES OF GLOBAL DIMMING.

THE STUDY:

DISCOVERY

Dr David Travis:

September 12th 2001, the aftermath of tragedy. While America mourned, the weather all over the country was unusually fine. Eight hundred miles west of New York, in Madison, Wisconsin a climate scientist called David Travis was on his way to work.

For 15 years Travis had been researching an apparently obscure topic, whether the vapor trails left by aircraft were having a significant effect on the climate. In the aftermath of 9/11 the entire US fleet was grounded, and Travis finally had a chance to find out. Travis suspected the grounding might make a small but detectable change to the climate. But what he observed was both immediate and dramatic. He found that the change in temperature range during those three days was just over one degrees C. One degree in just three days no one had ever seen such a big climatic change happen so fast. This was a new kind of climate change. Scientists call it Global Dimming. Two years ago most of them had never even heard of it, yet now they believe it may mean all their predictions about the future of our climate could be wrong. The trail that would lead to the discovery of Global Dimming began 40 years ago

“Around the twelfth, later on in the day, when I was driving to work, and I noticed how bright blue and clear the sky was. And at first I didn't think about it, then I realised the sky was unusually clear. It was certainly, you know, one of the tiny positives that may have come out of this, an opportunity to do research that hopefully will never happen again. We found that the change in temperature range during those three days was just over one degrees C. And you have to realise that from a layman's perspective that doesn't sound like much, but from a climate perspective that is huge. “

DR GERALD STANHILL (Agricultural Research Organisation, Israel)

The trail that would lead to the discovery of Global Dimming began 40 years ago, in Israel with the work of a young English immigrant called Gerry Stanhill. A trained biologist, Gerry got a job helping to design irrigation schemes. His task was to measure how strongly the sun shone over Israel.

For a year Gerry collected data from a network of light meters; the results were much as expected, and were used to help design the national irrigation system. But twenty years later, in the 1980s, Gerry decided to repeat his measurements to check that they were still valid. What he found stunned him.

“It was important for this work to measure solar radiation, because that is the factor that basically determines how much water crops require. Well I was amazed to find that there was a very serious reduction in sunlight, the amount of sunlight in Israel. In fact, if we compare those very early measurements in the 1950s with the current measurements, there was a staggering 22% drop in the sunlight, and that really amazed me.”

DR BEATE LIEPERT (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory)

But in fact Gerry was not the only scientist who had noticed a fall in sunlight. In Germany a young graduate climatologist called Beate Liepert found that the same thing seemed to be happening over the Bavarian Alps too.

“I was the same; I was as sceptical as any other climatologist. But then, I saw the same results here in Germany, so I believed him. “

Germany, Israel, what about the rest of the world? Working independently of each other, Liepert and Stanhill began searching through publications, journals and meteorological records from around the world. And they both found the same extraordinary story. Between the 1950s and the early 1990s the level of solar energy reaching the earth's surface had dropped 9% in Antarctica, 10% in the USA, by almost 30% in Russia. And by 16% in parts of the British Isles. This was a truly global phenomenon, and Gerry gave it a suitable name - Global Dimming. But again, the response from other scientists was one of sheer disbelief.

Disbelief:There was a good reason for the scepticism. Less energy from the Sun should be making the world cooler. Yet scientists knew the Earth was getting hotter. As the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases we emit trap ever more heat in the Earth's atmosphere and cause Global Warming.

According to DR GERALD STANHILL” The scientific community was obviously not ready to deal with the fact that there was a Global Dimming phenomenon.”

So Liepert and Stanhill's work was widely dismissed. But Global Dimming was not the only phenomenon that didn't seem to fit with Global Warming.

Pan evaporation rate:

Confirmation of global dimming

In Australia two more biologists, Michael Roderick and Graham Farquhar were intrigued by another paradoxical result - the world-wide decline in something called the pan evaporation rate.

It's called pan evaporation rate because it's evaporation rate from a pan. Every day all over the world people come out in the morning and see how much water they've got to add to a pan to bring it back to the level it was the same time the morning before. It's that simple. In some places agricultural scientists have been performing this rather dull daily task for more than a hundred years.

The long-term measurements of pan evaporation are what give it its real value. For decades, nobody took much notice of the pan evaporation measurements. But in the 1990s scientists spotted something very strange, the rate of evaporation was falling. There is a paradox here about the fact that the pan evaporation rate's

going down, an apparent paradox, but the global temperature's going up.

This was a puzzle. Most scientists reasoned that like a pan on the stove, turning up the global temperature should increase the rate at which water evaporated. But Roderick and Farquhar did some calculations and worked out that temperature was not the most important factor in pan evaporation.

Well it turns out in fact that the key things for pan evaporation are the sunlight, the humidity and the wind. But really the sunlight is a really dominant term there. They found that it was the energy of the photons hitting the surface, the actual sunlight that kicks the water molecules out of the pan and into the atmosphere. And so they too reached an extraordinary conclusion.

If the pan is going down then maybe that's the sunlight going down. The fall in pan evaporation was in fact an evidence of Global Dimming. There was a decline in pan evaporation over Russia, United States and Eastern Europe.

The drop in evaporation rate matched exactly the drop in sunlight reported by Beate Liepert and Gerry Stanhill. Two completely independent sets of observations had come to the same conclusion. Though it seemed incredible, there was no doubting Global Dimming now. All of a sudden, the world is dimming, and then we realise this really has a tremendous impact. So this is BIG on a global scale.

GLOBAL DIMMING DUE TO POLLUTION

THE MALDIVES EXPERIMENT

PROF VEERABHADRAN RAMANATHAN (University of California):

In the Maldives, a nation of a thousand tiny islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, so recently battered by the Asian tsunami. It was here that Veerabhadran Ramanathan, one of the world's leading climate scientists first began to unravel the mystery of what's causing Global Dimming. He had first noticed declining sunlight over large areas of the Pacific Ocean in the mid-1990s.

Burning fuel doesn't just produce the invisible greenhouse gases which cause global warming. It also produces visible pollution, tiny airborne particles of soot and other pollutants.

The Maldives were the perfect place to find out. The Maldives seem unpolluted, but in fact the northern islands sit in a stream of dirty air descending from India. Only the southern tip of the long island chain enjoys clean air coming all the way from Antarctica. So by comparing the northern islands with the southern one. Ramanathan and his colleagues would be able to see exactly what difference the pollution made to the atmosphere and the sunlight. Project INDOEX, as it was called, was a huge multinational effort. For four years every possible technique was used to sample and monitor the atmosphere over the Maldives. INDOEX cost twenty-five million dollars, but it produced results - and they surprised everyone.

This pollutant layer which was three kilometer thick, cut down the sunlight reaching the ocean by more than 10% ,this fall in sunlight meant that particle pollution was having a far bigger effect than anyone had thought possible. INDOEX showed that the pollution particles were blocking some sunlight themselves; but far more significant was what they were doing to the clouds. They were turning them into giant mirrors. Clouds are made of droplets of water. These only form when water vapour in the atmosphere starts to condense on the surface of naturally occurring airborne particles, typically pollen or sea salt. As they grow, the water droplets eventually become so heavy they fall as rain.

But Ramanathan found that polluted air contained far more particles than the unpolluted air, particles of ash, soot and sulphur dioxide. In the polluted air billions of man-made particles provided ten times as many sites around which water droplets could form. So polluted clouds contained many more water

droplets, each one far smaller than it would be naturally. Many small droplets reflect more light than fewer big ones. So the polluted clouds were reflecting more light back into space, preventing the heat of the sun getting through. This was the cause of Global Dimming .Basically the Global Dimming we saw in the North Indian Ocean, it was contributed on the one hand by the particles themselves shielding the ocean from the sunlight, on the other hand making the clouds brighter. So this insidious soup, consisting of soot, sulphates, nitrates, ash and what have you, was having a double whammy on the Global Dimming.

The models led to believe the human impact on the dimming was close to half to one per cent. So what we discovered was tenfold. We saw ten times more particles in the polluted air mass north of the Maldives compared with what we saw south of the Maldives which was a pristine air mass.

And when he looked at satellite images, Ramanathan found the same thing was happening all over the world, over India, over China, and extending into the Pacific. Over Western Europe... extending into Africa. Over the British Isles. But it was when scientists started to investigate the effects of Global Dimming that they made the most disturbing discovery of all. Those more reflective clouds could alter the pattern of the world's rainfall. With tragic consequences.

World without global dimming:

It was David Travis who first caught a glimpse of what the world could be like without Global Dimming. It happened in those chaotic days following the tragedy of 9/11. For fifteen years, Travis had been studying the vapour trails, or contrails, left behind by high-flying aircraft. Though each individual contrail seems small, when they all spread out, they can blanket the sky.

But the problem Travis faced was to establish exactly how big an effect the contrails were actually having. The only way to do that was to find a period of time when, although conditions were right for contrails to form, there were no flights Until September 2001. During period he gathered temperature records from all over the USA. He focused on the temperature range that normally changes quite slowly. It is the difference between the highest temperature during the day and the lowest at night.

During the grounding the temperature range jumped by over a degree Celsius. Travis had never seen anything like it before. This was the largest temperature swing of this magnitude in the last thirty years. If so much could happen in such a short time, removing just one form of pollution, then it suggests that the overall effect of Global Dimming on world temperatures could be huge. The 9\11 study showed that if we remove a contributor to Global Dimming, jet contrails, just for a three day period, we see an immediate response of the surface of temperature.

This is the crux of the problem. While the greenhouse effect has been warming the planet, it now seems Global Dimming has been cooling it down. So the warming caused by carbon dioxide has been hidden from us by the cooling from air pollution. But that situation is now starting to change. And that's not all. Climatologists like Peter Cox have begun to worry that Global Dimming has led them to underestimate the true power of global warming. They fear that the Earth could be far more vulnerable to greenhouse gases than they had previously thought.

Once the Greenland ice cap begins to melt, nothing will stop it. Many of the world's major cities will be living on borrowed time.

Decade by decade, the risk of catastrophic flooding would increase inexorably. But unless action is taken it won't stop there. Because after Greenland, the world's tropical rainforests will start to wither in the heat. And as the rainforest burnt away, it would release vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, driving global warming still further. Cox calculates that in just a century, the world could be 10 degrees hotter, a warming more rapid than any in Earth history. At this point, whatever we did to curb our emissions, it would be too late. Ten thousand billion tons of methane, a greenhouse gas eight times stronger than carbon dioxide, would be released into the atmosphere. The Earth's climate would be spinning out of control, heading towards temperatures unseen in four billion years. But this is not a prediction - it is a warning. It is what will happen if we clean up pollution while doing nothing about greenhouse gases. However, the easy solution - just keep on polluting and hope that Global Dimming will protect us - would be suicidal.

Instead we have to take urgent action to tackle the root cause of both global warming and Global Dimming - the burning of coal, oil and gas. We may have to make very difficult choices, about how we live and how we generate our electricity. We have been talking about such things for 20 years. But so far very little has been done in practical terms. The discovery of Global Dimming makes it clear that we are rapidly running out of time.

DR PETER COX (Hadley Centre, Met Office)

We've got the greenhouse effect, which has tended to warm up the climate. But then we've got this other effect that's much stronger than we thought which is a cooling effect that comes from particles in the atmosphere. And they're competing with one

another. And we know the climate's moved to a warmer state by about point six of a degree over the last hundred years.

We're talking about a change from a lush, moist climate, environment like this, to a North African climate in just a few decades or a hundred years. We can imagine ten degree warming in the UK in a hundred years is catastrophic. Ten degree warming in a hot country already makes it essentially uninhabitable. We will be in danger of destabilising these things called methane hydrates which store a lot of methane at the bottom of the ocean in a kind of frozen form. It would have terrible impact on human health,

This is the real sting in the tail. Solve the problem of Global Dimming and the world could get considerably hotter. And this is not just theory, it may already be happening. In Western Europe the steps we have taken to cut air pollution have started to bear fruit in a noticeable improvement in air quality and even a slight reduction in Global Dimming over the last few years. Yet at the same time, after decades in which they held steady, European temperatures have started rapidly to rise culminating in the savage summer of 2003.Forest fires devastated Portugal. Glaciers melted in the Alps. This could be the penalty of reducing Global Dimming without tackling the root cause of global warming

THE CAUSES OF GLOBAL DIMMING:

The scientists needed to find some cause that caused the global dimming, and, finally, they found it. The rain clouds, in the atmosphere, are condensed. When much water in a drop is accumulated, this falls and causes rain. But when these drops have polluting agents, the clouds tend to have only smaller water particles, which are delayed more in falling, in addition of which

the smallest particles reflect more the light of the Sun. There it is the cause of the global cooling and the bases of its theory. The sun rays cannot enter to the Earth because they are expelled by clouds with small particles, which make them flat and white. If sometimes you studied something on the colors you would have to know that while darker it is the color, it catches more the heat. If the color is lighter it reflects the light. Clouds are white, and if we added to them the small particles, create a great mirror to the space

The cause of the dimming is believed to be from the increased presence in the atmosphere of particulate matter and aerosols from burning fossil fuels and other human activity

The effect of solar “dimming” by virtue of dirty air is somewhat expected. More unexpected and surprising to scientists is how these particles alter the reflective properties of clouds. The reflectivity of a cloud depends on the surface area of the droplets within it.

The aerosols and other particles in polluted clouds create smaller water droplets than in unpolluted clouds; up to six times as many droplets.

The actual amount of water vapor does not change, but the increased number of droplets makes the clouds more reflective, thus radiating more sunlight back into space before reaching the Earth’s surface

It is caused by tiny airborne particles of soot, ash and sulphur dioxide acting as hosts for the accumulation of tiny rain droplets (too tiny to actually fall as rain!!!) that form into clouds that reflect back the heat of the sun.

Clouds intercept both heat from the sun and heat radiated from the Earth. Their effects are complex and vary in time, location and altitude. Usually during the daytime the interception of sunlight predominates, giving a cooling effect; however, at night the re-radiation of heat to the Earth slows the Earth's heat loss. Also it has been thought that humans help produce the particles in the earth's atmosphere, in the result of global dimming.

Pollutants such as the byproducts of burning fossil fuels, aerosols and the contrails of aeroplanes reflect the sunlight as well as affect the makeup of clouds. Airborne particles are absorbed into the cloud and so it becomes darker; the particles bind with the water droplets and form a denser, longer-lasting cloud.

Contrails in the sky caused by aeroplanes

Volcanic ash cloud also lead to global dimming

THE CONSEQUENCES:The consequences of the climatic change are very diverse so we will have to divide them in two different sections:

CLIMATIC CONSEQUENCES:

Drought, acid rain, and lung disease are all potential risks from the airborne particulates thought to cause global dimming. Perhaps the most insidious consequence, however, is the masking effect it has had on global warming.

Indian Ocean StudyLate 1990s

This 2001 satellite image captures the toxic aerosol haze blanketing northern India and Bangladesh, south of the Himalayan Mountains

In a $25 million multinational study spanning four years, climate scientists led by Veerabhadran Ramanathan documented how pollution was severely dimming areas of the Indian Ocean. The study, called Project INDOEX, found that over northern regions of the ocean, where pollution streams in from India, a pollutant layer nearly two miles thick cut down the sunlight reaching the ocean by more than 10 percent—a far bigger effect than most scientists had thought possible. Ramanathan's own models had led him to expect a dimming of only one half to one percent. Project INDOEX showed in detail how the toxic mix of soot, sulfates, and other pollutants both directly blocked sunlight and, even more critically, helped spawn clouds that reflected the sun's energy back to space.

Dinosaur Extinction TheoryEarly 1980s

Whether dinosaurs died out because a giant asteroid hit Earth or because volcanic eruptions clouded the skies (another leading theory), the basic mechanism of global cooling was the same.

In 1980, Walter and Luis Alvarez proposed that a giant asteroid striking Earth 65 million years ago had sent enough debris into the atmosphere to cool the planet and kill off the dinosaurs. The dinosaur extinction theory aroused public awareness of how rapidly Earth's climate might change. It also encouraged aerosol and climate scientists to look more closely at issues related to global dimming. A few years later, in 1983, a different theory had a similar effect, when aerosol scientists warned that nuclear war could lead to an apocalyptic "nuclear winter

Pollution's Far Reach1960s

The infamous smog of Los Angeles, despite countless clean air reforms since the 1940s, still plagues the city today

By midcentury, rising levels of smog in cities had triggered public outcry and captured the attention of aerosol scientists. Most of the focus initially was on large particles that fell from the sky in a matter of days. In the 1960s, however, experts began studying how microscopic particles could linger longer and travel farther. Experts set up networks of monitoring stations to regularly measure atmospheric turbidity, commonly known as haze. In 1967, Robert McCormick and John Ludwig of the National Center for Air Pollution Control reported a rise in turbidity over regions spanning as much as 600 miles. Even remote areas of the Arctic appeared affected. It seemed likely that both industrial pollution

and haze caused by slash-and-burn agriculture in the developing world were having a global reach.

ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES:

GLOBAL GROWTH: Yes, another concept with "the global" word, but is very important. The global growth indicates if the world is economically good, bad. In order to measure it, stock-market of values of different places from the world can be studied. If all of them are growing, it assumes that we are well. Let's imagine the case of an increase in the level of the sea in three meters. One of the first places in flooding is the coastal cities, that is, the ports. On them great part of the world-wide commerce depends, like the transport of electronic and food. Diverse islands of the Caribbean and the zone of Indonesia would get flood, as it happened to the Tsunami of the year. The president of the World Bank said in an interview that the world-wide growth would be affected in one fifth (1/5) if a drastic action against the climatic change were not taken.

AGRICULTURE: At the moment, the main source of foods at world-wide level is agriculture... For that reason if the production of the countries affect to the agriculturists, the provision of food at world-wide level could fall, elevating the prices and directly affecting the poor people. Indeed, the climatic change and, specifically, the global warming, affects negatively to agriculture, because the temperatures are more extreme, and in some cases there is less rain. The climate now is more unpredictable than 40 years ago. That causes that an agriculturist does not know if they must fumigate its plants. If they have to, the prices of its product increase.

INSURANCES: One of the more affected industries is the one of the insurances. Following the data of a study, between the 35 and 40% of the losses by climatic causes they are related to the climatic change. According to a report of the Association of British Insurers, if somebody limits the CO2 emissions would be possible to be gotten to reduce in an 80% the hurricanes that arrive at the coast in the year 2080 to the tropic.

FLOODS: Throughout history the cities located in the coast always are affected by the floods and other natural disasters. For that reason the climatic change can have great relevance at the time of investing in coastal infrastructures, like docks, to stop to the floods that more and more will be followed. These docks generally are very expensive, to which there is to add a cost to him of repairing, among others. It would be very difficult to put in each coastal city that is possible a catastrophe, in addition to the enormous price. The IPCC notices that in 2050 there will be than 150 million people sheltered in other countries because of floods. For Tuvalu , an archipelago of islands in the Pacific is nonviable to construct to defenses against the floods, reason why it has a deal with New Zealand in case of this disaster to evacuate its population.

 WATER SHORTAGE: In Peru the glacier melting has caused that its potable water reserve has diminished in a 25%. The illegal sweepings garbage dumps can contaminate the underground water that exist under them. As the poorest people live near these rubbish dumps, they drink this water, which increases their percentage of diseases. The high temperatures will also demand more water, for the cooling of buildings of all type and also for the human consumption and in the cases of agriculture, for the animals. In some places, like Sahel , rain to gotten to diminish in a 25%. The countries that depend on mountains to obtain their water, like Chile, will have to look for ways to get it, since the climates will also change in the mountains, warming up them or cooling them. Both with different consequences but with he himself effect: smaller amount of water for the population.

Costs of reducing the CO2 Emission: If the CO2 is one of the main causes of the climatic change, then. Why not to reduce its emissions? This sounds easy to say but actually it has highest costs for the industry. First which is need to do is to reduce the fossil fuel consumption, like Petroleum. For this we needed machines that consume less and then they render more, that is, than they are energetic efficient. It is needed to repair hundreds of machines that emit CO2, or simply to replace them by some

hybrid ones. This finally will pay its high cost, spending less energy.

 

EXPERIMENTS AND DATA ANALYSIS:I. Decreasing trend of sunshine hours and related driving forces in North China

By : Y. H. Yang & N. Zhao & X. H. Hao & C. Q. Li

The study area is between longitudes 113°31´~119° 36´E and latitudes 36°18´~41°56´N, including Hebei Province, period. Beijing and Tianjin metropolises and a portion of eastern Shanxi Province, North China.

Daily data for sunshine hours (Sh), air temperature (T), wind speed (Ws), relative humidity (RH) precipitation(P)

1. In the data analysis, daily records of sunshine hours and other meteorological data, including air temperature, relative humidity, precipitation and wind speed from each of the station were screened from the primary data for the period spanning 01 January 1965 to 31 December 1999.

2. Next, monthly and annual averages were calculated on a station basis. This was followed by the determination of the time-series trend of average annual sunshine hours for the 35-year period.

3. Finally, using sunshine hours as a dependent variable and all other factors as an independent variable, the relations

between the variables were determined using the SPSS linear regression model.

4. The data were grouped into two 10-year periods (1965~1974 and 1990~1999) and the residuals between the two periods determined and displayed in GIS. Furthermore average wind-speed distribution and decrease in sunshine hours due to decrease in wind speed were analyzed for the last 10-year period (1990~1999).

RESULTS AND ANALYSIS:

1. Trend of annual average sunshine hours: Time-series of the annual average sunshine hours were computed for the 35-year period (1965~1999) using data from 81 meteorological stations and presented. A general declining trend of –82.855 h/decade, i.e., a decrease of 0.227 h/day sunshine hours was observed for the 35-year period. In addition, it was observed that the decline in sunshine hours largely occurred in the 1970s and 1980s and was nearly stagnant for the 1990s.

Fig 1: Trend of yearly sunshine hours in North China since 1965 averaged for 81

meteorological stations (vertical bars indicate ±SE)

2. Spatial variation in sunshine-hour decline: To further analyze for spatial variation in sunshine-hour decline in the study area, the average difference in sunshine hours for the two 10-year periods (1965~1974 and 1990~1999) was computed and presented in Fig. 3. The difference was obtained by subtracting the average sunshine hours for the period 1965~1974 from that of 1990~1999. a general decrease in sunshine hours is easily noted for the stations in the research area, with the exception of only four meteorological stations including Changli (Qinhuangdao City), Laoting (Tangshan City),

Fig 2: Spatial distribution of the difference in annual average sunshine hours between

two 10-year periods (i.e., average for 1990~1999 minus average for 1965~1974)

3. Monthly and seasonal variation in sunshine hours: To thoroughly understand and isolate the driving forces behind the seasonal variations in sunshine hours, average monthly sunshine hours for the two 10-year periods (1965~1974 and 1990~1999) were computed and the results plotted in Fig. 4. With the exception of February, the average trend of monthly sunshine hours for the period 1990~1999 is consistently lower than that for 1965~1974 Decline in average monthly sunshine hours is highest in June and lowest in January and April. Based on the prevailing seasons in the study area, i.e., winter (December–February), spring (March to May), summer (June–August), and fall (September–

November); the average seasonal trends of sunshine hours are –0.283, –0.729, –0.757 and –0.737 h, respectively. These figures suggest a relatively low change in the winter season compared with the other three seasons (spring, summer and fall; all of which have similar values).

Fig 3: Comparison of average monthly sunshine hours for two 10-year periods (average for 1965~1974 and average for 1990~1999)

4. Relationship between sunshine hours and other meteorological factors: Using regression equations (Table 1), the relationship between sunshine hours and the four selected meteorological variables (daily averages of relative humidity, air temperature, wind speed, and total annual precipitation) was determined and the coefficient of determination (R2) calculated. A multiple regression relation expressing estimate of mean annual sunshine hours from the daily values was established as follows:

Sh ¼ 9:679 _ 0:001P _ 0:542Ws _ 0:053RH ð1Þ

The above regression equation resulted into a high correlation coefficient of R2=0.75, Which can be viewed. As a measure of the level of accuracy attained in the analysis . From

The established regression equation, a scatter correlation plot for the observed and predicted sunshine hours , suggests that the model estimate is within acceptable limits. From Table 1, it is evident that wind speed is the main factor influencing sunshine-hour decline.

CONCLUSION:

A steady decline in sunshine hours was noted for most of the observation stations in North China from mid 1960s to early 1990s, but the situation somewhat stabilized in the 1990s. The trend is similar to that observed in many other regions of the

world (i.e., from dimming in the 1960s to brightening in the 1990s), both from ground observations and recorded satellite data.

II. The reduction of global radiation in south-eastern Norway during the last 50 years By: A. A. Grimenes and V. Thue-Hansen

At the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (previously known as the Agricultural University of Norway), measurements of global radiation have been performed since 1949 which is rurally located, 35 km south of Oslo (59_400N, 10_460E) where the local climate is not affected by industry or heavy traffic. The data series from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences at A° s represents the longest time series of global radiation in Norway, and an analysis of these data could fill a gap in the overall global picture.

Monthly means of global radiation for A° s for the period 1950–1959 are published in a university report . A Moll-Gorczynski pyranometer was used, and the data registered by a Cambridge recorder

In this report, we exclude months with data where entire days are estimated from Bellani and cloud cover recordings, but we include those. months where only fractions of days were estimated. In total, 15 of the 120 months of this period where thus excluded.

In 1963, the observation site was moved four hundred meters to another location and a new Kipp and Zonen instrument installed. Parallel measurements performed throughout 1963 gave 11% higher radiation values for the new instrument.

A report from 1982 (Olseth and Hegg, 1982) dealt with radiation data for the period 1968–79, with the purpose of comparing the radiation climate at A° s and Bergen.

During the observation period from 1950 to the present date, the pyrheliometric scale (the reference scale for calibration) has changed. In the statistical analyses, this is accounted for by adjusting all data to the 1977 scale.

the data for the years 1950–59, excluding months with gaps, are believed to be reliable as no instrument drift was observed during this period

RESULT AND ANALYSIS:

1. Normalized values of the annual sums of global radiation are shown in Fig. 1. A linear regression curve was fitted through the points. All years missing one or several months of data are omitted, except for five years missing only December or January. (For these five years, 1955, 1958,1959, 1980 and 1989 the missing value was replaced by the December or January average for all observed months.) The annual sums are normalized by dividing values for each year by the annual average for all observed years. The regression equation is given by y =5:9 (+_1:5)-0:0025 (+_0:0008) . x x is the year, and the numbers in parenthesis the standard errors based on the 95% significance level. The mean reduction _G=G of the annual sum of global radiation per decade is 2.5%.

2. Figure 2 shows the reduction of global radiation on a monthly basis. Error bars represent the standard error. The reduction varies from more than 4% in April and June to less than 2% in January and May. For the months January and December, the reduction of global radiation is not statistically significant. If the mean reduction _G=G of the annual sum of global radiation per decade is calculatedfrom the monthly changes by weighting each month with the monthly average G, the annual reduction _G=G per decade is 3.1%. This is a more realistic value for the reduction as it is based on a total of 545 monthly values, a equivalent of 45 years – whereas the reduction of 2.5% is based on only 31 years due to omitted years with missing months.

CONCLUSION:

A change in atmospheric transmittance caused by increased aerosol content from the burning of fossil fuel must be explained by large scale transport and not by local sources. A reduction in global radiation between 2.5% and 3.1% per decade found in this study agrees with the overall picture presented by Stanhill et al. (2001). Future investigations should go into greater detail regarding the trajectories of large scale transports and investigate the relationship between trajectories and the annual patterns shown in Fig. 2.

REMEDIAL MEASURES:At the moment we have all the technology that we need to stop the Climate Change. Cheap solar panels, hydrogen and hybrid cars and many other forms make the same that we do with fossil fuels but without them, but from renewable sources that they are in the nature. We can stop having an enormous impact in the nature, with a little effort.

A. Capturing carbon emissions from coal-fired power stations and storing it underground - called carbon capture and storage (CCS) - is a good idea.

B. Global dimming can be dealt with by cleaning up emissions to reduce pollutants that create smog and other problems along with reducing the green house gas emissions in parallel.

C. Deliberate manipulation of this dimming effect is now being considered as a geoengineering technique to reduce the impact of global warming.

D. Decrease CO2 emissions, save energy; use new types of energy and products (like hybrid cars) that will decrease emissions and energy-waste.

1. RENEWABLE/CLEAN ENERGIES The renewable energies are all those that are obtained from elements that are not spent, and they don't finish, like the solar or the wind energy. Its utility is that they produce little or nothing of CO2, in general they doesn't impact the environment. One of its greater disadvantages is it high cost, but, according to studies, in the long term they will be every time cheaper.

There are a lot of renewable energies. Some of them are: the solar energy, wind energy and wave power.

After to have seen the description of renewable energies, with its positive and negative aspects, we can conclude that to obtain energy a country cannot be centered in only a type of source: it must be diversified, always using clean energies, to not cause a damage to the environment.

Although at the moment the renewable energies are much more expensive than the fossils, like the petroleum or natural gas. They don't have to be discarded, because, in the future, they will be much cheaper and efficient.

The countries must determine what alternative energy is more efficient according to its geography and necessity. Also they must have incentives to not use fossil fuels, like, for example, inverting in scientists to investigate and improve the clean energies that we have easy to use.

2. CLEAN VEHICLES Our world is in constant movement, planes that cross the Pacific Ocean, trucks that bring merchandise from north to south, east to west and from all parts to all parts and, finally, person that goes from a side to another one. But to move, a lot of people use their cars which work with benzene that simultaneously is done of petroleum. The benzene, when it is being burned to make the car works, generates a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2), one of the main causes of the climate change. It is for that reason that there are scientists that don't sleep good knowing that there are cars polluting outside and people is investigating how to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that the cars produce.

a. Hybrid cars -A hybrid car is who utilize benzene and electricity to work. These cars, while they accelerate, they charge a battery, that is used soon, what eliminates the necessity to burn fuel in some occasions.. They can serve us in a short term, because its already in the market, to be reducing the emissions little by little, but they not can be took like a definitive solution, because it utilize fossil fuels, will be finished one day.

b. Cars to hydrogen-A hybrid car contaminates, because some day it will have to burn fuel, that isn't the case of the cars to hydrogen, who, like its name says, utilize only the hydrogen to work. These cars produce nothing of CO2 with exception of the relation of the lubricants, but are very short. There are two types of hydrogen cars: those that use of the same form that the benzene, that is burning the hydrogen with the oxygen to produce combustion and the other one is utilizing fuel cells, that they work separating electrons of hydrogen to create a current flow. The problem of the cars that works with hydrogen is that they are too expensive, it is not very efficient to generate electricity and it’s very difficult to handling the hydrogen, which is very inflammable when it is in contact with the oxygen, aside from it has to be conserved in low temperatures.

3. RECYCLING : Recycling is to return to process an object which its utility life is finished for return to make it works. It allows us to save energy and money.

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SUMMARY:Global dimming is the gradual reduction in the amount of global direct irradiance at the Earth's surface that was observed for several decades after the start of systematic measurements in

1950s. It is thought to have been caused by an increase in particulates such as sulfur aerosols in the atmosphere due to human action. The effect varies by location, but worldwide it has been estimated to be of the order of a 4% reduction over the three decades from 1960-1990.The pan evaporation experiment led to the verification of global dimming.

The trend reversed during the past decade. Global dimming has interfered with the hydrological cycle by reducing evaporation and may have caused droughts in some areas. Global dimming also creates a cooling effect that may have partially masked the effect of greenhouse gases on global warming.

Global dimming can be dealt with by cleaning up emissions to reduce pollutants that create smog and other problems along with reducing the green house gas emissions in parallel.

CONCLUSION:The human is actually affecting the climate, but we still don't know if the world is getting warm or cold. We have to stop the gas emissions and energy consuming before the Clime Change effects increase more.

THE scientists have reached the disturbing conclusion that the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface has been gradually falling. Paradoxically, the decline in sunlight may mean that global warming is a far greater threat to society than previously thought. It was only recently, when DR Stanhill’s conclusions were confirmed by Australian scientists using a completely different method to estimate solar radiation, that climate scientists at last woke up to the reality of global dimming Scientists are now worried that dimming, by shielding the oceans from the full power of the Sun, may be disrupting the pattern of the world's rainfall

The climate is really changing, and the only way to stop it is decreasing our GHG emissions, using ecological ways of transport, clean energies and less consuming

REFERENCES:1. www.wikipedia.com

2. www.bbc.co.uk

3. www.globalissues.org

4. Dr .G.Stanhill; Global radiation climate change in Israel; climate change; pg-122-138.

5. Dr. D.Travis;Contrails reduce daily temperature range;Nature(journal)

6. Prof. R.Veerabhadran;”The greenhouse theory of climate: a test by an inadvertent global experiment”

7. Tim Flannery; “The Weather Maker: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth”;Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006

APPENDICES:

APPENDIX A (Glossary)

A

AEROSOL-a colloidal dispersion of solid or liquid particles in a gas; smoke or fog

C

CONTRAILS-an artificial cloud created by an aircraft; caused either by condensation due to the reduction in air pressure above the wing surface or by water vapor in the engine exhaust

G

GLOBAL DIMMING-it is the gradual reduction in the amount of global direct irradiance at the Earth's surface

I

INDOEX-it was used to sample and monitor the atmosphere over the Maldives.

N

NUCLEAR WINTER-it is a hypothetical global climate condition that is predicted to be a possible outcome of a large-scale nuclear war.

P

PAN EVAPORATION RATE- It is a measurement that combines or integrates the effects of several climate elements

APPENDIX B-

Yearly wind speed dynamics in North China since 1965 averaged from 81 meteorological stations (vertical bars indicate ±SE)

APPENDIX C-

Difference between average daily sunshine hours (hours per decade) for wind speed > 1.5 m/s and < 1.5 m/s for the 1990s (i.e., average for days with wind speed > 1.5 m/s minus average for days with wind speed < 1.5 m/s). Each station is depicted by a Thiessen polygon whose size dictates the area of influence of the station.

APPENDIX D-

GLOBAL TEMPRETURE FROM 1860- 2000

APPENDIX E-

Aerosol pollution in India