...Arctic Case Study Produce a case study file on Global Warming in the Arctic You should include: i. A map/definition of the Arctic ii. Evidence for the extent of warming iii. Key environmental, social and economic changes iv. Are there any advantages to global warming in the Arctic? v. Global concerns. Definition The Arctic is a polar region at the top of the world in the northernmost region of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, the United States, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. Evidence for the extent of global warming The average Artic temperatures have risen at 2 times compared to the of the world with the increase being 3-4°c in the last 50 years. In the next 100 years people predict that temperature of land will rise by 3-5°c and 7°c over the oceans. The ice withdrawal was at it smallest ever with its biggest ever retreat since records began, US scientists have confirmed that this is true. Also the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said the extent of the retreat was 4.13 million sq km. which breaks all previous records breaking the previous record of 5.32 million sq km in 2005. This allowed the Northwest Passage to be declared open. There are concerns that Arctic will shrink, and with the melting glaciers and other ice in Greenland, could soon contribute to a substantial rise in sea levels worldwide. And sea levels have risen significantly with the sea levels rising...
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...important in the food chain in the Arctic Ocean? What do they feed on? Amphipods are animals that belong to phylum Arthropoda and class Malacostraca that has no carapase (protective shield covering the back part of an animal) and has laterally compressed bodies. Basically, Amphipods are shrimp –like in form. Copepods are animals that also belong to phylum Arthropoda but to a different class Maxillopoda. They are usually 1 to 2 millimeters long, with a cylindrical body and rounded head with large antennae. Their body, including their armored exoskeleton, is so small and so thin that it is almost transparent. Because of their size, they have no need for a circulatory system and of course, a heart. These two organisms are very important in the food chain in the Arctic Ocean because they concentrate the protein and fatty acids from phytoplankton, bacteria, and in extreme cases, from dead animals, into a nutritious package that is consumed by the marine animals especially in the Arctic region. 9. List down the findings of the 4 experts in the Arctic Ocean? 1. Majority of the ice in the Arctic Ocean is comparatively thin (less than 2 meters). 2. The underside of the ice enters a series of depressions, which causes it to melt from underneath. 3. The team discovered the old history of whaling in Svalbard. 10. Make a 10 line conclusion based on the findings of the expedition. Give its implications to the environment. The ice caps in the Arctic Ocean are becoming thinner than...
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...Wabash Watershed Wabash Watershed (1961-1990) Introduction Global warming is a resultant of Heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. The release of these gases has increased in the last 500 years since the industrial revolution. There is an expectation that global warming will result to rising sea levels, droughts, fires, heat waves, extreme storms, heavy rainfall, floods, and melting of snow and ice. These changes as envisaged would affect agriculture and general food availability with devastating consequences for existence of life on earth. In additional, life would change completely because many systems are tied to the climate. For example, temperature changes would affect breeding cycle of insect, and this has implications on pollination and food availability for humans. Although short-term weather variations are normal and expected, long-term changes are deleterious to the environment and life on earth (Houghton, 2004). There is evidence that global warming is becoming worse primarily due to rise in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. In 1950s, the concentration of carbon dioxide was at 315 parts per million. Currently, the concentration is about 385 parts per million. To discover an increase in concentration of carbon dioxide throughout history, scientists have used bubbles of air trapped in ice and results show that the current concentration of carbon dioxide is the highest and has been, for more than 10,000 years (Maslin, 2007). Atmospheric carbon dioxide...
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...This ecosystem consists of a treeless flat land. The soil of a tundra is often times permanently frozen, which is known as permafrost, however it does melt slighting during the summer season, allowing plant growth. In general, all of the tundra ecosystems are found in the regions closest to the north pole, for obvious reasons (the further north you go the colder it gets which allows for the permafrost soil that a tundra is known to have. These regions are also flat and treeless which are helps to classify it as a tundra). If one were to look at a flat map of the world the top most section of the map would be considered a to have a tundra ecosystem (the top portions of Russia, Scandinavia, Alaska, Iceland, Canada, Greenland are a few...
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...Energy Development in the Arctic By Rachel Halpern Office of Energy and Environmental Industries Overview As opportunities to develop energy resources in the Arctic grow as a result of climate change and technical advances, companies wishing to participate will face not only technical challenges, but political, legal, and regulatory challenges, as well. The five Arctic countries considered in this paper (defined here as the countries that border the Arctic Sea – the United States, Canada, Norway, Denmark/Greenland, and Russia – see Figure 1 on next page for map) will likely see increased interest in the development of their Arctic resources in the coming decades and will have to begin considering how to address these challenges in order to take advantage of this interest. Each Arctic country has different policies, laws, and regulations regarding oil and gas development and transportation, and these differences will affect how and by whom resources are developed, and how and where they are transported. This paper describes 1) the reasons that energy companies will likely focus more of their attention on the Arctic; 2) the current state of knowledge of Arctic oil and gas resources; and 3) issues that will affect the development of Arctic oil and gas resources including boundary issues, access to resources, environmental restrictions, tax and regulatory issues, transportation challenges, and regional issues. Attractions of the Arctic The Arctic has not been widely...
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...Tori Banegas World Geography 29 February 2012 BP Oil Spill Oil rigs provide the world with the fuel that is needed to keep it running. However, it is common knowledge that they may potentially cause harm to not only living creatures but also the environment they rely on to survive. This was proven in the spring of 2010 when an oil rig off the Gulf of Mexico exploded and resulted in an oil spill. This catastrophic event opened millions of eyes to the errors that can be found in the way oil rigs are set up. It also caused people to take a closer look at whose responsibility it is to make sure all the safety codes and procedures are being followed before a drilling plan in approved. The BP disaster not only drew people’s attention to the process of oil drilling, it also had a serious impact on the economy and an even more tragic impact on the environment and wildlife around it. It also provided a perfect example of the dangers oil drilling can pose if it is done in an area not prepared to handle the consequences. On April 20, 2010 an offshore oil rig owned by BP (British Petroleum) blew up, taking the lives of 11 people before beginning to dump dangerous amounts of crude oil into the ocean and coastlines of the Gulf of Mexico. The oil rig, known as Deepwater Horizon, is believed to have dumped more than 200 million gallons of the oil before it was capped off three months later. This number however, is only an estimate due to the refusal of BP to allow accurate measures of...
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...Energy Summary Sarah Guillen SCI/362 Dr. May 6, 2013 Abstract This energy summary will review three cases, The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, The Yucca Mountain, and The Three Gorges Dam. The summary will recognize each kind of energy source, its comparative abundance, environmental impact, and the ethical and economic concerns of each of these cases selected. This summary will pinpoint prominent stakeholder’s, value the disadvantages and advantages of each of these energy sources according to the stakeholder’s vision, and possible tactics for resolving limited-resource issues raised in these selected cases while adding the role of conservation into these tactics. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge The debate about opening the refuge for oil drilling has been going on since 1980. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is closer one of the world’s largest pipeline systems, which is the Trans-Alaska Pipeline that starts in Prudhoe Bay and goes to the south of Valdez. Fourteen barrels of crude oil have been produced by Prudhoe Bay, making it the first time in the United States history to import more than half the oil it uses since the early 1900s. Such interest to open the oil drilling began after it decreased for five years after the Alaskan oil spill. The Department of the Interior admitted the opening the oil drilling will damage the area’s ecology and consequently the House of Representatives and the House settled to allow it. The ethical and economic problems...
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...ARCTIC VOL. 59, NO. 3 (SEPTEMBER 2006) P. 261 – 275 Possible Effects of Climate Warming on Selected Populations of Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus) in the Canadian Arctic IAN STIRLING1 and CLAIRE L. PARKINSON2 (Received 10 November 2005; accepted in revised form 25 January 2006) ABSTRACT. Polar bears depend on sea ice for survival. Climate warming in the Arctic has caused significant declines in total cover and thickness of sea ice in the polar basin and progressively earlier breakup in some areas. Inuit hunters in the areas of four polar bear populations in the eastern Canadian Arctic (including Western Hudson Bay) have reported seeing more bears near settlements during the open-water period in recent years. In a fifth ecologically similar population, no changes have yet been reported by Inuit hunters. These observations, interpreted as evidence of increasing population size, have resulted in increases in hunting quotas. However, long-term data on the population size and body condition of polar bears in Western Hudson Bay, as well as population and harvest data from Baffin Bay, make it clear that those two populations at least are more likely to be declining, not increasing. While the ecological details vary in the regions occupied by the five different populations discussed in this paper, analysis of passive-microwave satellite imagery beginning in the late 1970s indicates that the sea ice is breaking up at progressively earlier dates, so that bears must fast for longer...
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...Energy Summary Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Not many people are familiar with the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and how we as a nation benefits from it. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, is located in the Northeast corner of Alaska, is positioned north of the Arctic Circle and 1,300 miles south of the North Pole. The Alaska National Wildlife Refuge is approximately 19.2-million acres that was created in order to give provisions to a variety of plant and animal life of any Park or Refuge in the circumpolar arctic. This area served as a vital factor due to the ecological and evolutionary process because of the fact that different kinds of life forms can grow. In 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act renamed "Range" to "Refuge," and increased the two areas of the Refuge and assigned a big part for Wilderness, let Congress have a portion of the coastal plain for oil and gas development, and designated three Wild Rivers (Voss, 2006). There were mixed feelings in reference to discovering of oil on the land with concerns of whether or not the drilling would cause harm the areas of the ecosystem. Even with the concerns, and after confirmation was made on the negative impact that the drilling would cause with the ecosystem the senate and the House of Representatives passed measures to allow it. There was jobs created from this, and the cost of the oil was less than imported oil in 2004. This also created an ecological...
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...AS GEOGRAPHY UNIT 1 WORLD AT RISK WORLD AT RISK GLOBAL HAZARDS Hazard – Potential threat to human life or property Natural Hazards – Caused by natural processes e.g. lava flow from volcanic eruption Hydro-meteorological Hazards – Caused by climatic processes (droughts, floods, tropical cyclones and storms Geophysical Hazards – Caused by land processes (volcanic eruptions, earthquakes) Disaster – When a hazard seriously affects humans Risk – Likelihood that humans will be seriously affected by a hazard Vulnerability – How susceptible a population is to the damage caused by a hazard. Disaster Risk Equation Risk (R) – Hazards (H) * Vulnerability (V) / Capacity to Cope (C) Risk increases if: * Frequency or severity of hazards increase * People vulnerability increase * Capacity to cope decreases (Capacity to cope is the ability to deal with the consequences of a hazard) e.g. people in remote areas are further from help in central areas, so have lower capacity to cope) * Global Warming – greatest global hazard * Recent increase in average global temp – climate change * Causes other types of climate change * Context hazard – global in scale (affects all parts of environment) – potential to trigger other hazards or make them worse * Chronic Hazard (Long term) * People who aren’t causing the problem are mostly affected * Difficult to find solutions * Hydro-meteorological hazards becoming more frequent ...
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...Global Issues | Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Gender equality is a human right,1 but our world faces a persistent gap in access to opportunities and decision-making power for women and men.2 Globally, women have fewer opportunities for economic participation than men, less access to basic and higher education, greater health and safety risks, and less political representation.2 Guaranteeing the rights of women and giving them opportunities to reach their full potential is critical not only for attaining gender equality, but also for meeting a wide range of international development goals. Empowered women and girls contribute to the health and productivity of their families, communities, and countries, creating a ripple effect that benefits everyone. The word gender describes the socially-constructed roles and responsibilities that societies consider appropriate for men and women.17 Gender equality means that men and women have equal power and equal opportunities for financial independence, education, and personal development 3 . Women's empowerment is a critical aspect of achieving gender equality. It includes increasing a woman's sense of self-worth, her decision-making power, her access to opportunities and resources, her power and control over her own life inside and outside the home, and her ability to effect change.4 Yet gender issues are not focused on women alone, but on the relationship between men and women in society.5 The actions and attitudes of men and...
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...Oil Drilling Jasmine A. Richardson Freshman Seminar Friday 10:20-11:20 Throughout the years the government has spent millions of dollars on oil drilling. But what is the actual purpose of oil drilling? Is it necessary? Are we spending too much money on this one project or is it useful in the end? These questions have been debated so much over and over again. But the question is am I for or against oil drilling? Oil drilling takes up too much time and money for one simple purpose. It takes time and a workload to even begin this process. In order to perform a normal oil drilling process you have to find a land that has to be cleared and leveled, water must be nearby, if there is no water the crews have to dig water well, and lastly the crews have to reserve a pit. All of this is very expensive and damaging to the land. In an article in Bloomberg Business week it was recorded that marathon oil spent 10 million on oil drilling and that was just for one time. If oil drilling is really purposeful for the country why make it so expensive? There aren’t any other resources to finding oil? And the main objective is if we’re spending so much money on oil drilling then why are we even fighting in the war anymore? The damages to the land are excruciating and the government always ends up paying for the damages so that’s double to money they’re spending. One expensive tool they use to capture the oil is the oil rig. They use it to drill into the ground so that they can confiscate...
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...The year 2011 will go down in global corporate history as the year when one of the world’s largest energy companies, BP, and the Russian state company, Rosneft, unsuccessfully attempted to form a strategic partnership on Arctic development. This failure was caused by the contractual and legal objections of the AAR consortium - BP’s partners in the Russian oil company TNK-BP. In 2003-5, BP and the AAR consortium led by three billionaires with Russian connections - Mikhail Fridman, Len Blavatnik, and Viktor Vekselberg - merged their Russian oil corporate assets - TNK, Sidanko, and Onako and their subsidiaries - under the umbrella of TNK-BP.2 This joint venture was established on a 50/50 basis, the operation of which required mutual joint decision making. The partners also signed a shareholding agreement on TNK- BP’s right of first refusal in relation to potential future oil and gas projects offered to BP or AAR in Russia and Ukraine. This agreement was subsequently used by AAR to stop the BP-Rosneft deal in international courts. Unfortunately, this was not the first time that BP had been unable to change the way it conducted its business in Russia. The first example occurred in 2007-8 when BP was reported to be keen on having Gazprom as a partner instead of AAR. This move would have transformed the TNK-BP joint venture into Gazprom-BP. This did not transpire. Second, in the spring-summer 2008, there was a turbulent ‘misunderstanding’...
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...Introduction The purpose of any classification system is to obtain an efficient arrangement of information in a simplified and generalized form. Thus climatic statistics can be organized in order to describe and delimit the major types of climate is quantitative terms. Obviously no single classification can serve more than a limited number of purposes of satisfactory and many different schemes have therefore been developed. Some schemes merely provide a convenient nomenclature system, whereas others are an essential primarily further study. Many climatic classifications, for instance are concerned with the relationship between climate and vegetation or soils but surprisingly few attempts have been made to base a classification on the direct effects of climate on man. General classification related to plant growth / vegetation. Numerous schemes have been suggested d for relating climatic limits to plant growth or vegetation growth rely basically or two basic criteria the degree of aridity and warmth. Aridity is not simply a matter of low precipitation but of the effective precipitation i.e. precipitation minus evaporation. The ratio of rainfall/temperature has been used as such an index of precipitation effectiveness or the ground that higher temperatures in cease evaporation. W. KOPPEN CLASSFICATION A prime example of this type of classification is W. Koppen published between 1900 and 1936. The key features of Koppen’s final classifications are temperature criteria and...
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...Table of content: Abstract 3 I. INTRODUCTION 4 II. Theory 1: GLOBAL WARMING IN THE PAST 5 • Article 1: Volcanism • Article 2: Orbital variation • Article 3: Solar output • Article 4: Plate tectonic • Article 5: Solar radiation III. Theory2: THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT 7 • Article1: Carbon Dioxide • Article2: Methane • Article Ni trous Oxide • Article Ozone • Article4: Synthetic Chemicals • Article 5: Aerosols IV. Theory3: EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING 13 • Article 1: Weather • Article 2: Ice Sheets and Glaciers • Article 3: Sea Level • Article 4: Agriculture • Article 5: Plants and Animals V. Theory4: The impact of global warming on humanity 22 • Article 1: Extreme storm affects health and infrastructure • Article 2: Heat wave increase death and illness • Article 3: Water and food supplies threatened • Article 4: Drinkable water become increasingly contaminated • Article 5: Large numbers of environmental refugee VI. Theory5: EFFORTS TO CONTROL GLOBAL WARMING 23 • Article 1: Carbone Capture • Article 2: Energie Sources • Article 3: koyoto • Article 4: Programs in the United States • Article 5: Montreal protocol CONCLUSION 27 Bibliography 28 Abstract: Throughout its long history, earth has warmed and cooled time, and again. Climate has changed...
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