Climate Change What does it mean to You?

Have you heard about the golden age when there were no typhoons, great earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in the Philippines?

Have you heard what shall happen in the future in the Philippines? More and greater typhoons, sea level raising about 1 – 2 meters and hot climate. WE shall examine these topics today!

Typhoons Both Tropical Storm Fengshen and Tropical Storm Fung-Wong can be seen nearing China in this rare true color image taken on July 26, 2002, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), flying aboard NASA?s Terra spacecraft. From NASA Earth Observatory

How the Philippines is affected Tracks of all tropical cyclones in the north west Pacific Ocean between 1980 and The vertical line to the right is the International Date Line.

Philippines only From a scientific article: Interdecadal variability of tropical cyclone landfall in the Philippines from 1902 to 2005 Published in GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 36

Philippine problem Always the same in the Philippines. Typhoons are always coming and you can just adapt to it. If you would like to live in the Philippines and not experience a lot of typhoons move to Zamboanga.

Statistics from the West Pacific ocean

From Philippine official sources

Typhoons in The world

World statistics of cyclones

Accumulated energy in the hurricanes

Close to Scandinavia and Sweden

Sea level increase since the last ice age

During the ice age the ice area was 3 times as large compared with today. The volume was about 2,5 times bigger. When it melted with the highest speed the sea level rose with 1 – 2 meters/100 years. That rate of melting is impossible today.

How was it 1000 years ago?

Vikings

During the last 100 years the sea level has increased about 20 cm and that is a lot of water. The sea surface is 70 % of the earth.

High up in the Arctic

Bangladesh Sometimes we hear that some countries are inundated by the water like Bangladesh and the islands of South Pacific. How is it in reality? Let’s first look on Bangladesh a delta landscape, a very flat land. Compare the blue and red colors.

Coastland of Bangladesh Bangladesh is growing every year.

How about the low lying islands in the Pacific?

Many have said that these islands will be covered by the ocean in the future. How is it at the moment? A scientific study last year showed that many islands are growing in size in spite of the sea level rise. Why?

Because of this fish, the parrotfish.

This fish eats the corals and spits out the coral fragments and thus one fish makes 90 kg of sands each year. The waves are transporting it to the beach and the island is growing. But if you are taking up the sand for house building maybe the waves will erode the beach more instead.

Temperature rise How much have you heard about the ice age? Three times as much ice it is now. Why did it end?

The globe during the last ice age

How was the Philippines during the ice age? Larger land area!

Other parts of the world Himalayas and South America had more ice Sea level 120 m lower. Tropical rainforest smaller. Tropical areas were 3 – 4 degrees colder. Deserts were larger. Australia was dryer

Temperature during years

Every ice age was more than years. Varm periods called Interglacials were mostly short periods – years. Today we have lived about years in a warm period and in the future will have another ice age.

Temperature after the great ice age. Reconstructed from the big Greenland ice sheet. The ice remembers the temperature.

Temperature during the last hundred years.

Philippine temperature statistics

Manila temperature

Swedish temperature, a comparison

Longest temperature in Sweden

Conclusion 1 The climate has always been changing. We must adapt to it.

Conclusion 2 Decrease the greenhouse gasses from our society. For example use natural gas instead of coal when heating or producing energy.