Martin Henry
THESE EXCEPTIONALLY hot June days, interspersed with rain, coming over from the end of May before the summer has officially started provide the perfect backdrop for a discussion of global warming and climate change.
That average global temperatures have been inching upwards is hardly a matter of dispute. The role of human activity in this, and the implications for the global environment have differences of views. But obviously human action is affecting the biosphere in many and varied ways. And the super-question, the question of survival, is what can we do to reduce impact? This is not just a matter of science. The answer is very much, as well, a matter of philosophy and theology. But unfortunately, these primary wisdom disciplines tend to get pretty short-changed in the discussions.
A climate studies group, led by Professor Anthony Chen has been working out of the Department of Physics at the UWI Mona. In fact, quite a bit of the scientific work done in the research institutions of the country has been on understanding and managing the Jamaican and Caribbean natural environment as any quick scan of the proceedings of the SRC-sponsored Annual National Conferences on Science and Technology will reveal. Perhaps only agricultural and natural products research would outrank the output from environmental research. But too often this useful stuff doesn't get to the public or into public policy for action.
Chen's group which has worked on problems from hurricane formation to the health implications of climate change has found a correlation between increasing minimum temperatures and the outbreak of dengue epidemics in the Caribbean.
DENGUE VIRUS
"The Study of Climate variability and its impact on Dengue in the Caribbean", which lead author Dr. Roxann Stennett has been kind enough to send me, is reporting both an increasing trend in dengue cases and in temperatures, with increasing rainfall serving as a kind of bridge between the two. Trinidad has some 50 per cent of the cases; Jamaica, 10 per cent. The dengue virus is transmitted by the aedes aegypti mosquito, which breeds in water. Higher minimum temperatures may be pushing greater rainfall, providing greater breeding opportunities for the mosquito, which, in greater numbers, transmits the virus.
There is very little that Caribbean countries can do about the temperature increase, but the data from the Climate Studies Group is quite useful in planning appropriate responses to reducing the dengue outbreaks apparently pushed by higher minimum temperatures.
Last week I said Britain is one of the most environmentally conscious places on the planet. The flagship publication of their Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), appropriately named 'Planet Earth', in the Spring 2005 issue carried a climate change pullout and a 'bleak' news item on global temperatures. The news item, "Bleak first results from climateprediction.net", says global temperatures could be more than twice as sensitive to increasing levels of greenhouse gases than the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considered likely according to results from the world's largest climate prediction experiment.
METEOROLOGICAL DATA
The climate modelling experiment used computing time donated by more than 95,000 people in 150 countries who downloaded free software for the project running the climate model loaded with meteorological data in the background when their computers are idling. The results are not cool. The researchers are reporting that "if the results from the climate modelling experiment reflect the real world, even today's level of greenhouse gases could already be dangerously high." And, based on current trends, carbon dioxide levels are expected to rise to twice the pre-Industrial Revolution level by 2050 with global average temperatures following upwards by up to 11ºC.
The NERC Climate Change pull-out says climate change will be the biggest environmental issue of this century, noting that every one of the hottest 15 years on record has been since 1980 with five since 1997. 1998 was the warmest year on record since 1860.
The IPCC of the UN, recognised as the "definitive source of information on climate change", believes that "most of the observed warming over the last 50 years can probably be attributed to human activities", especially the burning of fossil fuels.
The 'widely accepted facts' on climate change are considerably fewer than the uncertainties and the 'what is likely to happen scenarios'. "We know," says the NERC Climate Change document, "that even with concerted action, greenhouse gas levels will continue to grow." What is less certain is the exact size and timing of [resulting climate changes], and the regional and local details. Such uncertainties mean that future effects could be less or more severe than we currently estimate." The UWI Climate Studies Group is doing valuable work in filling in regional and local details as a basis for informed response to what we can't control.
Martin Henry is a communications specialist.
