Alexandre Sylvio Vieira da Costa - Agronomic Engineer - Post Doc. Geociences
Adjunt Professor Federal University of Jequitinhonha and Mucuri Valleys
Does anyone know a country called Kiribati? It is a
nation formed by a complex of islands located in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean with a population of 100 thousand inhabitants. It would be a paradise,
but a major problem is occurring there: slowly, the level of the Pacific Ocean
is increasing and slowly covering the islands that make up this nation. If this
rate of ocean rise continues, a few decades from now, the population of this
small country will have to look elsewhere for a living. Global warming blame?
Let's look at the scientific and monitoring facts of the planet. According to
NASA, the US space agency, 2016 was the hottest year ever recorded on the
planet, considering the temperature measurements that began in 1880. The
previous record was 2015 and 2014 and 2013 ... we can say, through global
measurements of temperature, which with each passing year the planet gets
warmer. Another point is the emission of carbon dioxide, the dreaded CO2. This
typical element, present in large quantities in the release of burning fossil
fuels and burning areas is one of the gases responsible for the retention of
heat on the surface of the earth from solar radiation and the heat produced by
cities through vehicles and factories, mainly . The higher your level in the
atmosphere, the warmer the environment. The global CO2 figures measured in 2006
have reached levels around 380 ppm (parts per million). In 2016 these values exceeded
402 ppm.
In recent years, the ice shelves (the frozen ocean
area) in the Arctic region have averaged 13.4 percent a year, according to NASA
and other US research bodies. In the 1970s this frozen area there at the
northern end of the planet ranged between 7 and 8 million square kilometers and
reached in 2015, a little more than 4.5 million square kilometers, a very
drastic reduction for a very short time.
To supplement the information, it is not only in
Kiribati, that country we mentioned at the beginning of the text, that sea
level rises. According to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the Internal
Displacement Monitoring Center, which assess the levels of the oceans across
the planet from the 1990s to the present, average levels of the world's oceans
rose 8.4 centimeters. Little?
We have to keep ourselves informed about what happens
to our planet because the reflexes of these changes, sooner or later, will
strike us all. Stay tuned!
