Feedback Loops

Carbon's Impact

Currently our global average temperature has been increasing at a rate higher than is normally projected based on the standard heating and cooling cycles of Earth, something that seems to be associated at least in part with these increased carbon dioxide emissions. This increased average temperature may have far-reaching consequences, such as potentially rising sea levels and more extreme weather (since higher temperatures both boost evaporation and dry the land itself more quickly). How climate will be influenced overall by this temperature increase is hard to predict (just like weather itself) but there's a lot of concern worldwide about everything going on.

Rising global temperature can also lead to many other effects, such as an increase in infectious disease (bacteria tends to thrive in warmer climates) or cause human conflict (extreme weather in particular can damage locations that are considered habitable or lead to famine, making resources more limited).

RCP 8.5 is the worst-case scenario while RCP 2.6 is the best-case scenario based on models done by many climate institutions and scientists. Even in the best case scenario, temperature and sea levels will rise at least a bit for the entire planet. Keep in mind water level is in meters so this prediction is only a rise of 1-3 feet globally even though it looks even more dramatic than that from the graph presented. There are also predictions made that are with more and less dramatic changes than the ones shown here but generally they fall into this range.

Feedback Loops

Change to one Earth System often causes change to other systems since they are all connected. This will often create feedback, either reinforcing a change or attempting to counterbalance (reduce) it. Most of earth's systems operate within set parameters and are counterbalancing in nature, keeping things balanced as much as possible. The temperature of our climate is steadily increasing over time, with many factors at play.

The Earth rotates on its axis, which creates the seasons and the differences between them through heating and cooling cycles. On top of that, this rotation is slowly changing the seasons while the Earth is wobbling (about 13,000 years ago the seasons would have been opposite of what they are today because of this wobbling on the axis)! The cycle furthermore changes as the Earth's orbit around the sun does, it's not constant either. The earth has gone through a lot of heating cycles before with the average temperature over 90 degrees Fahrenheit!

Ice and Snow reflect a lot of heat into space, so as snow and ice melts it means more and more sunlight can be trapped on Earth's surface instead of being reflected back into space. More heat also means ice and snow stay on the ground for shorter periods of time. Sea ice has been following a downward trend overall, leading to more cycles of heating and cooling as it slips into the ocean. This is part of the feedback loop that's heating our planet over time even though it leads to temporary cooling.

Desertification

The addition of more CO2 into the carbon cycle influences everything around it:

Atmosphere: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, meaning the more CO2 there is in the atmosphere the more heat that gets trapped on our planet.
Soil: As inappropriate farming practices happen it makes soil less nutrient-rich, leading to a lot of biodiversity loss known as desertification since fertile land becomes more and more like a desert. Less biodiversity means less overall plant life in the long run to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Over-fertilization can also make N2O, a greenhouse gas that's 300x as potent at trapping heat as CO2.
Ocean: As CO2 comes in contact with and absorbed by oceans it makes the ocean more acidic. More acidic oceans leads to problems for a lot of animal life that lives there.

Animal and plant life diversity is becoming more scarce as the climate changes in a feedback loop that slowly turns fertile land into desert. Many scientists are worried that the temperature increase of the planet is reaching a tipping point, a point where sudden and irreversible changes happen to a system where the new point of stability makes it difficult for us to survive.

Additional Resources

Interesting Links

Page updated

Report abuse