Introduction:
To understand the world’s climate, how it has changed and how it will change is quite a difficult task; a task that is extremely controversial. Scientists have been doing numerous small scale experiments and extrapolating the data to predict future trends in climate and emissions. This paper will show how extrapolating dating from small scale experiments is not always accurate and have a large margin of error.
The paper will discuss the various methods that environmental scientists use in attempting to extrapolate data from small scale experiments. With major emphasis on how the methods used are unable to account for the numerous variables that would have to be factored in for determining a large scale change.
Air Pollution:
In a small scale experiment by Nath and Patil (2006) they used an in situ real time mixing height model. The Mixing Height (MH) is the dispersion depth of the atmospheric boundary layer, a crucial input parameter in air pollution models (Nath et al., 2006). This model is able to get specific data from nearby meteorological stations twice daily and extrapolate the data to get an estimate of the MH. However, the extrapolated values obtained can cause significant errors in the prediction of pollution due to the fact that MH is time and site dependant.
Nath and Patil claim that the use of the in situ real time mixing height model they could estimate onsite real time values of the MH from readily available surface measurements of temperature and wind. This data is than combined to a readily available air pollution prediction model to predict the current pollution in the specified area. This model is meant to be used for remote locations where development is new and there are not a l...
... middle of paper ...
...at can be replicated. Otherwise making large scale predictions from small scale experiments can be extremely flawed.
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One of the most compelling and difficult environmental problems society faces today is climate change. People do not realize how much the environment has changed for the worse in the last ten years, until they are told that the last two decades of the 20th century have been the hottest in the last 400 years, according to climate studies (Conserve Energy Future). Today, the carbon dioxide levels have reached 396.81 parts per million (ppm). “Carbon dioxide (CO2) has also increased over the last 100 years-- from about 300 ppm to 370 ppm. Interestingly, the majority of these additions have occurred in the last 50 years, when temperature increases have been the slowest” (geocraft).
Air Pollution in Mexico City Mexico City adds an estimated one million new residents each year, resulting in one million new additions to the city’s already abominable air quality (Collins, 119). Over the span of a generation, Mexico City’s air has gone from being one of the world’s cleanest to one of the world’s most polluted, as well as the most polluted in its country. The average visibility in the city is down from almost 100 km in the 1940s to only 1.5 km today, removing the once beautiful landscape of the surrounding snow-capped volcanoes (Yip, 1). More significantly, however, Mexico City’s air problems have resulted in a notable decrease in the health of its residents, particularly its children. There are a variety of reasons for the decline in air quality, including factory emissions, suspended particles, vehicles, as well as problematic geographic hindrances.
Our world is always changing, so is our climate. Some changes are apparent, others not so much. Climate change is an important issue of concern in the twenty-first century. Environment, if it changes at all, evolves so slowly that the difference cannot be seen in a human lifetime (Wearth, 2014). Mostly all scientists predicted that it would take thousands of years for the planet to warm up due to emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels called greenhouse gases. But in the past 200 years, things began to change. The rate and the amount of warming that is happening on this planet are unprecedented. Wearth says, “People did not grasp the prodigious fact that both population and industrialization were exploding in a pattern of exponential
“Climate change: How do we know?” NASA. NASA n. d. n. pag. Web. 28 November
There is no longer any question that our world climate has changed (King, 2004). Over the last 100 years, "temperatures have risen by about 0.6 degrees Celsius and global sea level has risen by about 20cm" (K...
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"Home | American Society of Agronomy." Home | American Society of Agronomy. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. .
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Jay S., Jones C., Slinn P, Wood C. 2007. Environmental impact assessment: Retrospect and prospect. 27, 287-300. Sciencedirect. Elsevier.
Air pollution is a type of pollution that can severely damage our environment as well as the earth’s atmosphere. Air pollution occurs all the time when the air contains many substances ...
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