Climate Change and Environmental Exodus: Understanding the Consequences of Global Warming

1. 11thInternational Summer School MIGRANTS, HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY 19-23 June 2017 Marine Protected Area - conference room via Cameroni, Lampedusa, Italy Climate Change and Environmental Exodus Prof. Massimo ScaliaCentro Interuniversitario di Ricerca Per lo Svilupposostenibile (CIRPS) – “La Sapienza” Università di Roma

2. Global Warming Greenhouse effect The Sun radiation, that is electromagnetic waves, that reaches the Earth is partially reflected and a component, the infrared rays, is captured by gases in the lower layer of the atmosphere: the stratosphere. The captured infrared rays, that is a thermal energy, warm the stratosphere yielding a greenhouse effect. This phenomenon has given for two billions of years its contribution to the general energy balance of the stratosphere, that rules the dynamics of wind circulation and other climate characteristics

4. Greenhouse effect In the previous slide you have seen greenhouse gases: Carbon dioxide, Methane, Nitrous Oxide, Ozone. It has been this thermal shield that has favored the development of the life on the Earth. What’s wrong, now? CFCs are not natural, are a product of the activity of the man, ten thousands time more powerful than Carbon dioxide But they are not, now, the problem. The increasing quantity of Carbon dioxide emitted by combustion of fossil fuels is the problem

6. Two years ago the CO2 concentration reached the “psychological” threshold of 400 p.p.m. Now we are at 410 p.p.m

7. At the beginning of the industrial era the CO2 concentration was under 290 ppm. Few weeks ago has reached 400 ppm, the maximum for the last 650.000 years. Greenhouse effect The increase for these last 50 years has been the same as that has requested 5000 years in other climatological epochs.

8. Which the consequences? • Extreme meteorological events more and more intense (do you remeber the hurricane Katrina, New Orleans 2005?). In Italy, every year is worse. • Tropicalization of climate (isotherm lines go to North). • Impressive growth of areas of the Earth hit by drought. • Too many maxima of the mean temperature at the surface of the Earth for the last twenty years (a very “bad” statistics). • Melting of glaciers. Artic glaciers have been melting in the period 1996 – 2005 at a rate, 220 km3/year, double of that of the previous decade.

9. Sometimes the images are more useful than the words. Let’s see few of them world-wide

22. Only ten years ago it was possible to shot a photo like this. Today, no ice-breaker ship like that. Glacier is broken, the rush to catch the treasure of the Arctic underground through the “North-West” course is open. An international treaty, as that one for Antarctica, is absolutely needed to limit possible tremendous damages

23. 2006, Septembre. Satellite Images from ESA, the European Spatial Agency: the Arctic calotte is fractured and a ship “could easily reach North Pole sailing from Spitzberg Islands (Norway) or from the northern coasts of Siberia” ANSA 20/09/2006

25. The glaciers are melting If you prefer to the images the less passionate language of the science, look at the graph describing the rate of change of the global glacier mass versus time

27. To the precipitous fall of that curve corresponds the worrying increase of the level of the oceans

31. Which forecasts for the future? Some examples of the scenarios for the next two decades The soils at risk of submersion: In Europe: The Netherlands, Venice and Adriatic lagoons, the coastal areas of Mediterranean countries (50 millions of people) In Asia: the areas of Beijing, Shanghai and the Ganges Brahmaputra delta (Bangladesh) (more than 100 millions of people) In America: Florida, the Oakland-San Francisco Bay (30 millions of people)

32. GLOBAL WARMING AND IPCC • It’s a quarter of century that the risk of global warming has began a matter of a hard political contest in order to face the global warming: • 1988 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – a panel of experts and scientists nominated by the Countries adhering to the United Nations – is established at the ONU; • 1992 the New York Convention against climate change is open to the ratification of the Parts, that is the Nations, at the Conference of Rio de Janeiro; • 1997 the Kyoto Protocol is launched, reserved to developed Countries; • 2005 the Kyoto Protocol comes into force on the 16th of Feb; United States, Japan, Canada and Australia don’t agree.

33. IPCC claims in its reports that the global warming is mainly due to human activities, that is the combustion of fossils, with the increase of CO2 emissions and the consequent growth of the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse gases are responsible of the alteration of the climate.

34. Total primary energy supplies of the World are constituted by fossils – oil, coal, gas – more than 81% up today; (mainly oil and coal, the stronger Carbon emitters, about the 61%). World energy requirements are more than double today than in 1973 (the first energy world crisis): 6109 MTep (1973), 13.699 Mtep (2014). Consequently, the CO2 emissions are more than double from 15.628 millions of tons (1973) to 32.381 (2014). (data from “Key World Energy Statistics 2016”, IEA)

35. IPCC scenarios start with a forecast of the evolution in time of world energy requirement(fossils combustion) and the corresponding CO2, and other greenhouse gases, immissions in atmosphere. Then, they build a correlation with the increase of temperature in the different areas of the Earth. To each scenario is given a probability to happen (the gaussian curves at the left in the previous table)

37. IPCC has the great merit of having enlightened all over the world the issue of global warming, as due to human activities – “anthropogenic cause” – for a so long time denied. IPCC has brought us to the Kyoto Protocol ratification and suggests, today, the road map against the threat of the climate upset. With its reports IPCC gives the most complete research about climate change under physical, geological, biological, social and cultural prophiles. The merit has been fairly recognized with the 2007 Nobel Prize

38. IPCC scenarios perform long time estimates – over all our century –and could generate the illusion that the changement will occur time by time, that will be gradual. Something that could be somehow controlled.. It does not work this way

39. ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE

40. In 2002, the National Research Council of the US National Academy of Sciences publishes, after a decade of researches, a report : “Abrupt Climate Change. Inevitable surprises”, that deeply modifies the current point of view of Climatology. Apart the known astronomic effects (the motions of the Earth), two are the main factors that can modify the climate: the dynamic of glaciers and the salinity of oceanic streams. No role to the atmosphere

41. To shut the stable door after the horse has gone

42. Climate change (“Abrupt climate change”, NRC , 2002) A “simple” model for better understanding climate instability

43. Climate change This abrupt climate change doesn’t depends on time, as it is clear when the forcing action remains over all time under the threshold: no threshold value, no abrupt change

44. The little sphere is the climate (the set of all climate cycles), the red arrow is the intensity of the “forcing action” (the global warming). Under a certain value the effect of the forcing action is to make the sphere oscillate in the hollow, but at a certain level of intensity the sphere will be pushed from the hollow up to the peak. Both positions are of equilibrium, what is then abruptly changed in the behavior of the climate? The equilibrium is stable in the hollow, while in the peak is unstable because a whatever little push is able to remove the sphere from that position. To a continuous and gradual variation of the forcing action corresponds for a critical value of that action – the threshold – a discontinuity: beyond the threshold, equilibrium is “broken”, a sudden change takes place from stability to instability of all climate cycles. This abrupt climate change, triggered by the forcing action, doesn’t depends on time, as it is clear when the forcing action remains under the threshold over all time : no threshold value, no abrupt change

48. The “phase portrait” exhibits areas of stability, areas of instability and the rising of a chaotic dynamics, determined the latter by the assumption of some threshold value by the parameter that rules the intensity of the forcing action. The complexity of the dynamics of the “simple” model is well represented in the previous figures by the behavior of the so called “separating curves” – the “stable manifold” (green) and the “unstable manifold” (red) in the phase portrait; and by the subdivision of the phase space in “stability islands” and chaotic regions (the last figure).

49. “...in a chaotic system, suchas the earth’s climate, anabruptclimatechangealwayscouldoccur..” From “Abrupt Climate Change”

50. But, if atmosphere does not play a role in climate modifications, how can the greenhouse gases, since they live in the atmosphere, alter the climate ?