I was listening to NPR today and I heard about the amplification effect caused by Global warming. One part of me thought about the negative effects of global warming and how bad things could happen. The other part didnt feel the same way..Have you ever felt that when you come across something terribly negative, almost always, there is something very interesting hidden underneath all the negativeness ? For example, when the temperature gets really cold and one is helpless and shivering, I cant help but notice how the body is built by nature to shiver to generate heat. Another example is the baby's crying. I heard that the baby's cry is designed by nature to make sure that you cant ignore it or get to sleep. Infact, one of the torture that is used for prisoners is to generate the baby's cry randomly when they sleep. Okay, bear with me on this one more example... I was just kidding... I hope you get the point.
Anyway, in the Arctic, the polar ice cap melting is one thing. But, it seems to create a temperature amplification as well. The ice caps in the arctic reflect a large portion of light that falls on earth. When the ice melts, it exposes water which doesnt reflect the light as much as the ice caps do, thus causing the temperature to rise even faster. And, all it takes is to trip the temperature to slightly above 32F inorder to melt the ice. Many of you might think, Yeah, Yeah, as if its going to happen tomorrow... May be, it wont happen tomorrow...Day After Tomorrow ?
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Negative Attraction
Posted by Suresh Sankaralingam at 10:21 PM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
5 comments:
very intreresting...dunno much abt global warming..but yeah the thought is scary when we think abt the future...neways back to the negative attraction part..wish the body was equipped with some reaction to take care of exam distress...lol...i need it right now...
I did not get the part about temperature amplification. Could you elaborate?
I guess we should all see "inconvenient truth" , the movie on environment by AlGore.May not be the whole truth as told by Michael Crichton in "State of Fear"
There was an interesting counter piece on TV showing how useful Co2 is...I think it was in the Jon Stewart show.
@ Survivor: State of fear was interesting...again the truth about environmental issues is really not clear...research today is plagued by funding problems and getting corporate sponsors means something in return for them (the corporates)...this could potentially compromise research...on the other hand the question is how much is fiction in Crichtons work...for those interested in the environment an excellent resource is "Resources for the Future".. www.rff.org
My understanding...As we all know, global warming is always talked about in terms of increased carbon-di-oxide level in earth atmosphere. Increased carbon-di-oxide wud mean increased temperature. The reason why it is always talked in terms of polar ice caps is because a shift in temperature at the poles will cause a big shift in climate throughout the earth...
Well, focussing just on the temperature change at the poles, it can be due to one of three effects: increased co2, temperature of the ocean and the amount of ice covering the ocean. When temperature increases due to co2, ice melts (which would have otherwise reflected light) and more ocean gets exposed to sun which in turn results in an increase in ocean temperature which in turn melts more ice and the entire process has a positive feedback.. This is the temperature amplification effect... Ozone layer depletion is whole another story which also affects temperature.
Post a Comment