Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Climate varies from region to region. This variation is driven by the uneven
distribution of solar heating, the individual responses of the atmosphere, oceans
and land surface, the interactions between these, and the physical characteristics
of the regions. The perturbations of the atmospheric constituents that lead to
global changes affect certain aspects of these complex interactions.
Some human-induced factors that affect climate (‘forcings’) are global in nature,
while others differ from one region to another. For example, carbon dioxide,
which causes warming, is distributed evenly around the globe, regardless of
where the emissions originate, whereas sulphate aerosols (small particles) that
offset some of the warming tend to be regional in their distribution.
In India,Climate change will make monsoons unpredictable. As a result, rain-fed
wheat cultivation in South Asia will suffer in a big way. Total cereal production
will go down. The crop yield per hectare will be hit badly, causing food insecurity
and loss of livelihood.
The rising levels of the sea in the coastal areas will damage nursery areas for
fisheries, causing coastal erosion and flooding.
The Arctic regions, Sub-Saharan Africa, small islands and Asian mega deltas,
including the Ganga and Brahmaputra, will be affected most.
The greenhouse gases act like a blanket around the earth, trapping too much of
the heat that would otherwise have escaped into space.
Glaciers in the northwestern Himalayas and in the Karakoram range - where
westerly winter winds are the major source of moisture - have remained stable or
even advanced.
On the other hand, most Himalayan glaciers - where a substantial part of the
moisture is supplied by the summer monsoon - have been retreating over the past
century.