CLIMATE CHANGE BRINGS NEEDED RAIN TO AFRICA
Climate change has been going on since the beginningof time, but has been the source of intense debate in recent years. In the caseof the Sahel area of Africa, climate change means 4 more inches ofdesperately-needed rainfall per year than in the past, according to a new studyby climatologists in the Journal Nature Climate Change. The main cause of theincrease is the rising greenhouse gas emissions.
The Sahel is an area about four times the size ofTexas that stretches across Africa along the southern edge of the SaharaDesert. Past droughts in the area that killed thousands prompted theLive Aid concert in 1985 to fund relief efforts.
Some climate experts say this and other positiveeffects of CO2 emissions are too often ignored.
“[Benefits are] certainly underreported. Scientistshave known for 15 years that the Sahel was greening up and desertificationwas reversing there,” Pat Michaels, former president of the AmericanAssociation of State Climatologists, and a director at the CATO Institute.
He also noted that the Sahel area may be getting moretree and plant coverage due in part to the fact that plants have an easier timegrowing with more CO2 in the atmosphere.
But the study’s authors say that although there aresome benefits, people should still worry about climate change and cut emissions.
“The effects of climate change are already evidentaround the world, and it’s imperative that we reduce carbon emissions toavoid the risks of much worse impacts in future,” Rowan Sutton, study co-authorand director of Climate Research at the UK National Centre for AtmosphericScience.
“There have been temperature rises leading toincreases in heat waves around the world, and related rises in evaporation fromthe soil that increases the risk of drought even where rainfall amounts haven'tchanged,” he said.
Global temperature has risen about 1.7 degrees overthe last century but there has been virtually no warming for the last 17 years,according to NASA’s data.
Experts disagree about how bad warming will be.Climate models have historically overestimated global warming, but the U.N.predicts that the globe will warm between 2.5 to 5.5 degrees over the nextcentury and that warming in that range would cause the world’s GDP to be about1.1% lower in the year 2100.
Climate experts who are relatively less worried aboutwarming said this new paper is “a welcome change of tone” because it waswilling to point out a benefit of warming, but they are still skepticalof the study.
“The skill of climate models in predicting regionalrain is so poor that I do not put much stock in claims of trends towards eithermore or less rain,” Richard Tol, a leading expert on the economics of climatechange at the University of Sussex in the U.K.
The study calls for follow-up work to be done, notingthat, “it will be important to repeat our study with other climate models,including at higher resolution.”
Study co-author Buwen Dong also argues that the costsof warming outweigh the benefits even though his study found additionalrainfall in drought-stricken Africa.
“The increases in rainfall will have been beneficialto some people in the short term, but at the same time the rise in temperaturescan lead to more frequent heat waves and damage to crops,” he said.
SOURCE: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/06/04/climate-change-brings-needed-rain-to-africa/
Image: http://ak.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/3250696/preview/stock-footage-tropical-rainfall-shallow-focus-on-leafs-with-sound.jpg
VOCABULARY:
1. drought - a prolonged period of abnormally lowrainfall a shortage of water resulting from this.
2. desertification - the process by which fertile landbecomes desert, typically as a result of drought, deforestation, orinappropriate agriculture.
3. emissions - the production and discharge ofsomething, especially gas or radiation.
4. imperative - of vital importance crucial.
5. skeptical - not easily convinced having doubts orreservations.
DISCUSSION:
1. How much do you know about environmental issues?
2. What are the evident effects of climate change inyour ｃountry?
3. The article presents one positive outcome of climatechange, do you think there could be morebenefits of climate change?
4. Based on the effects of climate change that we'reexperiencing at present, how much more will global climate change in 10 years?
5. Comment on this saying: "Every cloud has a silver lining". Can we consider this news a silver lining to climate change?
