Environmental effects of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide

A review of the literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to the conclusion that increases during the 20th century have produced no deleterious effects upon global climate or temperature. Increased carbon dioxide has, however, markedly increased plant growth rates as inferred from numerous laboratory and field experiments. There is no clear evidence, nor unique attribution, of the global effects of anthropogenic CO2 on climate. Meaningful integrated assessments of the environmental impacts of anthropogenic CO2 are not yet possible because model estimates of global and regional climate changes on interannual, decadal and centennial timescales remain highly uncertain.

The main objective of this research is to detect the forest fire by sensing temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels to prevent the forest fire and to provide exact information using IOT at faster speed. The efficiency of detection using Node Microcontroller Unit (NodeMCU) is compared with Arduino microcontroller. A total of 40 samples are taken from the Serial monitor of the Arduino IDE. Group 1 has temperature values (n = 10) and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels (n = 10) with the Node Microcontroller Unit (Node MCU). Group 2 has temperature values (n = 10) and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels (n = 10) using Arduino Microcontroller. In this novel forest fire detection, the G-power analysis was done to the samples and the minimum power is acquired to be 0.8 for the system with an error correction of 0.5. The significance values for the temperature sensor are 0.129 and 0.132 for NodeMCU and Arduino Microcontroller respectively. The significance values for atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are 0.212 and 0.224 for NodeMCU and Arduino Microcontroller respectively. Results: Through the implementation of this novel forest fire detection, it is observed that the efficiency of NodeMCU is 92.9 % and efficiency of Arduino microcontroller is 89.95 %. This innovative approach with NodeMCU appears to be more efficient (92.9 %) in detecting the occurrence of forest fire using Arduino Microcontroller with the significance value of temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide level of 0.129 and 0.212 respectively.

Effects of fuel and forest conservation on future levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide

Effects of fuel and forest conservation on future levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide

Grass attack

To address this question we need to understand what climate is. Briefly, climate is a short-hand way of summarizing the weather observed over a particular period of time at a particular location. Mostly we are familiar with climate averages such as average temperature or rainfall experienced at a location. But other weather factors are also part of climate such as wind, sunshine and cloud. Furthermore, although averages are useful they don’t tell the whole story. We also need to summarise how much these elements might vary during the same period. This might include their range, and information about the size of extreme events and how often they occur. Internationally, local climate standards are assessed over 30-year periods, although for some applications shorter or longer periods are useful. Averages and ranges may also be assessed for larger areas and indeed for the world as a whole. The climate of the Earth is largely determined by astronomical factors (the strength of the Sun and distance from it, the speed of rotation of the Earth and the tilt of the Earth’s axis), atmospheric constituents (gases, aerosols, dust and clouds) and the configuration of the Earth’s surface (land, ocean or ice). Locally and regionally the climate is also affected by latitude, altitude, local and regional geography and time of year. Recent climate over land and the oceans can be computed from weather records, e.g. collected by weather stations or ships, ocean buoys and increasingly satellites. For periods going back further in time, we use records of factors that are affected by the climate – such as tree rings, ice cores from ice sheets, climate sensitive species over land and in the oceans, and deposits of mud and rock. In general terms climate change relates to shifts in climate between different periods of time, long enough to minimize the effects of short-term variations, both locally and globally. However current interest has focused on an observed warming of the global climate over the past 150 years. In fact 2016 was the warmest year on record at over 0.8 degC above the 1961–1990 average (WMO, 2017) and more than 1 degC above the 1850–1900 average. It was the third year in a row to set a record. Sixteen of the seventeen warmest years have occurred since 2001, up to 2016 (NASA, 2017). The scientific community and policymakers are interested in understanding the reasons for this warming and what may happen in the future, as it has considerable implications for human society. There is a lot of evidence that the global climate has changed in the past on many time scales and for many reasons. Over the last two and a half million years the Earth has been in a relatively cool phase during which large polar ice sheets have grown (ice ages) and then receded (interglacial periods) several times, in a quasi-cyclical manner, related to changes in astronomical factors. Further back in time much warmer episodes have been related to higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (e.g. about 3Myr ago and 55Myr ago; IPCC, 2013). Since the end of the last ice age, 10 000 years ago, the world’s climate has been relatively stable, but regionally there have been important natural fluctuations. So the question is whether the climate change we have observed over the past 150 years is part of a longer term climate cycle, natural variability or a long term change related to some specific factor. The evidence we have is that it is overwhelmingly the result of changes to the composition of the atmosphere – the growth in so called greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, which trap heat in the atmosphere and lead to changes in global, regional and local climates. The scientific challenge in understanding climate change is to separate out the effect of greenhouse gases from other potential factors, which may vary regionally. We also need to be able to predict the future course of climate change whilst greenhouse gas levels continue to grow due to human activities. Future parts of this series will address in more detail what causes climate change and how we can predict its future course.

Climate scientists have long warned that global warming, even if by only a few degrees, would play global havoc, with devastating negative impacts on the entire planet. In the climate science world, there are no positive impacts of a temperature increase, only negatives. Climate scientists frequently blame global warming almost entirely on the steady increase in the use of fossil fuels by human beings as the world becomes ever more and more industrialized. Climate scientists generally believe that drastic and costly steps must immediately be taken to curb the burning of fossil fuels in an effort to reduce the pace of global warming, even if these drastic measures have only a minimal impact on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, if at all.This paper takes an entirely different view grounded in both plant science and agricultural production economics. This has been largely if not entirely ignored by the climate scientists. The scientific basis is grounded both in agricultural production economics and the basics of plant physiology. The conclusion I reach states that to the extent the planet is warming, while there may be some measurable and reasonable costs, the same warming undeniably generates large benefits to agriculture. These benefits accrue to farmers and consumers. Farmers operating in the Northern Plains states have been and continue to be major beneficiaries. These benefits include not only the direct impacts of the carbon dioxide on plant growth, but also benefits such as increased rainfall associated with greater cloud cover, longer growing seasons allowing a larger diversity of high-value species to be grown, more lush pasture growth for livestock and warmer winters that allow more fall-planted and high-yielding plant such as winter wheats to thrive.

The world’s oceans have played an important role in sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide through solubility and the action of algae. Fixation of atmospheric carbon dioxide by photoautotrophic algal cultures has the potential to diminish the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thereby helping to alleviate the trend toward global warming. This work investigates the role of algae in controlling the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Partial Rank Correlation Coefficients (PRCCs) technique is used to address how the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide is affected by changes in a specific parameter disregarding the uncertainty over the rest of the model parameters. Parameters related to algal growth are shown to significantly reduce the level of atmospheric CO2. Further, we explore the dynamics of nonautonomous system by incorporating the seasonal variations of some ecologically important model parameters. Our nonautonomous system exhibits globally attractive positive periodic solution, and also the appearance of double periodic solution is observed. Moreover, by letting the seasonally forced parameters as almost periodic functions of time, we show almost periodic behavior of the system. Our findings suggest that the policy makers should focus on continuous addition of nutrients in the ocean to accelerate the algal growth thereby reducing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

In-home assessment of the older adult—An interdisciplinary approach: Charles A. Emlett, Jeffrey L. Crabtree, Victoria Ann Condon, and Linda A. Treml 1998, Aspen Publishers, Inc., Gaitherrsburg, MD 289 pages, soft-bound, $49

Historical and future quantification of terrestrial carbon sequestration from a Greenhouse-Gas-Value perspective

Data laboriously extracted from an Antarctic ice core provide an unprecedented view of temperature, and levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane, over the past 800,000 years of Earth's history. The air bubbles trapped in the Antarctic Vostok and EPICA Dome C ice cores provide composite records of levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane covering the past 650,000 years. Now the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane concentrations has been extended by two more complete glacial cycles to 800,000 years ago. The new data are from the lowest 200 metres of the Dome C core. This ice core went down to just a few metres above bedrock at a depth of 3,260 metres. Two papers report analyses of this deep ice, including the lowest carbon dioxide concentration so far measured in an ice core. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is strongly correlated with Antarctic temperature throughout the eight glacial cycles, but with significantly lower concentrations between 650,000 and 750,000 years before present. The cover shows a strip of ice core from an Antarctic ice core from Berkner Island, this slice from a depth of 120 metres. Photo by Chris Gilbert, British Antarctic Survey. Elsewhere in this issue, we move from climates past to future plans for climate prediction.

Coal is a carbon containing non-renewable fossil fuel and one of the major contributors of climate change and global warming. We used TANSO FTS instrument in order to obtain the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide through datasets obtained from GOSAT satellite. GIOVANNI was also used to obtain atmospheric concentration of various gases. Burning of coal causes emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) and black carbon (BC) in atmosphere which are responsible for nearly 0.3°C of 1°C rise in temperature. The annual average value of carbon emission for the year 2010 and 2019 is 388.4 ppm and 409 ppm respectively. Since the pre-industrial times CO2 concentrations have increased up to100 PPM (36%) in the last two and a half centuries (250 years).In South Asia Dhaka has the worst quality of air as CO2 concentration (6.7%) is higher than the country’s GDP (5.25%) and energy consumption (4.77%). While an increasing trend GHG has been observed in Lahore up to 5.5 %. This study concludes that the high concentration of carbon dioxide in atmosphere is responsible for average rise of 1.2 °C temperature annually. This temperature rise can lead to adverse climatic conditions i.e., melting of glaciers which will consequently rise the sea level various landmasses may disappear by 2050.

Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide may alter plant/herbivore interactions. The projected rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is expected to increase plant productivity, but little evidence is available regarding effects on insect feeding or growth. Leaves of soybean plants grown under three carbon dioxide regimes (350, 500, and 650 µl/liter)were fed to soybean looper larvae. Larvae fed at increasingly higher rates on plants from elevated carbon dioxide atmospheres: 80% greater rates on leaves from the 650 µl/liter treatment than on leaves from the 350 µl/liter treatment. Variation in larval feeding was related to the leaf content of nitrogen and water and to the leaf-specific weight. each of which was altered by the carbon dioxide growth regime of the soybean plants. This study suggests that the impact of herbivores may increase as the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide rises.

Increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to ocean acidification, causing significant reductions in the growth of crustose coralline algae. Owing to anthropogenic emissions, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide could almost double between 2006 and 2100 according to business-as-usual carbon dioxide emission scenarios1. Because the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere2,3,4, increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations will lead to increasing dissolved inorganic carbon and carbon dioxide in surface ocean waters, and hence acidification and lower carbonate saturation states2,5. As a consequence, it has been suggested that marine calcifying organisms, for example corals, coralline algae, molluscs and foraminifera, will have difficulties producing their skeletons and shells at current rates6,7, with potentially severe implications for marine ecosystems, including coral reefs6,8,9,10,11. Here we report a seven-week experiment exploring the effects of ocean acidification on crustose coralline algae, a cosmopolitan group of calcifying algae that is ecologically important in most shallow-water habitats12,13,14. Six outdoor mesocosms were continuously supplied with sea water from the adjacent reef and manipulated to simulate conditions of either ambient or elevated seawater carbon dioxide concentrations. The recruitment rate and growth of crustose coralline algae were severely inhibited in the elevated carbon dioxide mesocosms. Our findings suggest that ocean acidification due to human activities could cause significant change to benthic community structure in shallow-warm-water carbonate ecosystems.

Summary During a period of a presumed world food crisis, the importance of climate and weather, and the rising level of atmospheric carbon dioxide are highlighted as important changes in the global environment. There is a dual and simultaneous effect of the rising level of atmospheric carbon dioxide on first, global warming and second, on the enhancement of crop productivity as reflected by an increased photosynthetic capacity, greater water use efficiency and alleviation of other crop stresses. Climate variability has a greater impact on agricultural productivity than does climate change. The rising level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is a universally free subsidy, gaining in magnitude with time, on which all can reckon when it comes to crop productivity.