Climate Change In Florida

Florida’s environment is a sub-tropical atmosphere, with hundreds of species of animals. Along the coast is were Florida’s natural wildlife and vegetation thrive; however, Florida has a serious issue that impacts its coastal environment. Each year global warming contributes to rising sea levels across the globe. Although Florida’s Coastal environment has survived for thousands of years, the increasing sea level along the gulf coast over recent years, has caused severe damage. Additional research is needed to understand the impact of rising waters on Florida’s Coastal eco-system.

A marshy region with tall grasses that are almost underwater, the Everglades are wetlands expanding across the southern tip of Florida. The Everglades consists of a variety of ecosystems that are habitats to a multitude of diverse species of amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds. However, this National Park is deteriorating as it is exposed to the harmful effects of global warming. Global warming is caused by the excessive build-up of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere created by the carbon dioxide emissions released from burning oil, coal, and gas. According to the National Resources Defense Council, the nation’s most effective environmental group with a team of lawyers and scientists, the heating of the Earth creates disastrous effects on the Everglades that “includes retreating and eroding shorelines, dying coral reefs, salt water intrusion into the freshwater aquifer, increasing numbers of forest fires, and warmer air and sea surface temperatures” (Fiedler 2001). These changes to the environment impacts the many species of the Everglades and put them in danger of extinction. Large business corporations, such as American Electric Power and Duke Energy, emit high amounts of carbon dioxide, which is the main contributor to global warming. Corporations not only affect global warming around the world, but they also negatively affect the environments of the Everglades when they release greenhouse gases into the

The rise of sea levels are projected to increase warmer waters from one and a half to two degrees in Central North Pacific in 2050, 1.9 to 2.6 degrees in Northern Islands, and also two to five degrees in the Caribbean at the end of this century. This rise of temperature decreases the life of ecosystems in the ocean and resulting in less freshwater for

After conducting research for the climate change project various tidbits of information shaped my beliefs. For instance learning about the area coverage of the subdivisions within ecosystems and viewing a physical map of the world. This enabled me to see how widespread ecosystems are and how we are impacting them, along with climate change. A possible solution that I came up with and can be done locally is minimizing the amount of deforestation taking place in places near the Everglades area. This is because the more trees are cut down the more food sources are limited as well as shelter which is why animals are becoming eradicated there. Other possible solutions that my other group members came up with was using more renewable energy sources

Florida’s biodiversity is extremely important in maintaining. Many people fail to realize that without the biodiversity there would be no humans. They fail to see how our lives and lives many species would change drastically. Since I am one the few people in Florida to take a biogeography course, I am now a member of the Florida biodiversity Czar after the next election. What would be my top priorities to protect Florida’s biodiversity, and how would I implement them?

Bradenton, Florida temperatures climates are similar to those of the tropics. Looking at the climatological chart above we can see that the second day of each month of August, September, October, March, May and July temperatures can range from eighty one degrees to a record high of ninety six degrees, with low temperatures falling to sixty two degrees in May. In the slightly cooler months of December, January, February, April and June temperatures did not exceed seventy nine degrees, nor fall below fifty three degrees, therefore, making it feel more like spring. The coolest temperature occurs in the month of November with only a record high of sixty seven degrees, while a low temperature of forty six degrees resembles a more fall like temperature.

In the last 19 years, the sea level around Miami have gone up 3.7 inches.The amount of assets that exposed to sea level rise is largest in the world and the population that is in the danger of sea level rise is fourth in Miami.What is worse, tropical storm and flooding become more and more frequent events that cause strong impact on Miami with sea level rise. Thus the Miami River area is prone to flooding because of its low elevation and itself act as a conduit for water to flow into some

This presents a more immediate threat; viruses are easily spread and are difficult to contain in any one city or region. If we don’t act soon, we could face an epidemic that would completely isolate Florida from the rest of the country and would cost us billions in aid and tourism dollars. Naturally, sea level rise is not the only issue facing our climate; gas and oil leaks present an ever-growing threat as we continue to sell and mine our resources at the expense of the great state we call home.

Groundbreaking heat in the summer of 2003 caused an estimated 70,000 deaths in Europe. Temperatures during that summer in parts of Europe were 5-10°C (9-18°F) higher than in 2001. The number of record high temperature events in the United States has been increasing, while the number of record low temperature events has been decreasing, since 1950. The U.S. has also witnessed increasing numbers of intense rainfall events. Since the 1970s, December-February temperature increases have ranged from 1 to 2 degrees in the Pacific Northwest to about 4 degrees in the Northeast to more than 6 degrees in Alaska. Winters are getting shorter, too. Spring arrives 10-14 days earlier than it did just 20 years ago. The frequency of large wildfires and the total area burned have been steadily increasing in the Western United States because of the lack of rainfall, with global warming believed to be a major contributing factor. There have been many other rapidly changing weather patterns in the past few decades. The question is: Are humans responsible for these unusual weather patterns because of global warming? Scientists worldwide are trying to find the answer.

The Earth-atmosphere energy cycle is a structure of coordinating atmospheric components. The Köppen classification system is a simple format for generalizing climate patterns, partitioning the planet into malleable regions by average environmental conditions. Terms to describe the atypical fluctuations in the Earth’s climate include both global warming and climate change. While global warming denotes an average escalation of temperature, climate change suggests a shift in the overall pattern. Climatic zone instabilities, temperature variation, and other deviations that may interrelate with climate are described as global change. The state of global climatic equilibrium can be discerned through focusing on observable imbalances such as positive radiative forcing by atmospheric gasses, temperature fluctuations, weather phenomena and anthropologic influences.

Climate change is a major issue that has been gaining political debate over the past few decades. According to Britain’s former Chief Scientific Advisor David King, climate change is “the most severe problem we are facing today—more serious even than the threat of terrorism” (Worldwatch.org). Research shows that the overall temperature of the earth’s atmosphere has been increasing at an alarming rate. This change has not only sparked the rapid melting of polar ice caps, which are subsequently raising sea levels, but it is also believed to be the cause of extreme weather patterns such as heat waves, droughts, and most recently, hurricanes. With the rise of sea levels being coupled with warmer temperatures, ideal conditions are created for hurricanes to not only form, but also greatly intensify. The general understanding many researchers have is that climate change is at least partially caused by human activity. Where the difference in opinions emerge, is how great of an effect humans have on global warming.

Climate change is the effect of global warming. Global warming is when the temperature of the earth is rising and this has many effects on the world we know. The greenhouse effect causes global warming. The greenhouse effect is due to gases being trapped in earths atmosphere and not being released into space beyond our atmosphere. When the gases are built up in the atmosphere the heat from the sun cannot escape and thus acts as a blanket to trap the heat and ultimately gradually heat the temperature of the entire earth. The global warming does not just effect the air temperature or weather patterns; it can also raise the temperature of the world’s oceans. Global warming is said to be the direct effect of humans. Humans are the main contributor to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These gases are produced from a post-industrial economy such as the United States. An increase in CO2 emissions is the leading cause of global warming. CO2 is one of the gases that is trapping the heat in the atmosphere and an increase can be due to deforestation, burning fossil fuels, production of electricity, and many more. Global warming causes the temperatures to rise which can cause an increase in the amount of glacial ice to melt and can ultimately cause the sea level to rise from excess water. Since the sea level would rise this means that land is more susceptible to be submerged underwater. Living in Florida this poses a threat. Florida is so waterlogged to begin with that even a

Climate change historically referred to natural cycles of warming and cooling of the Earth, which has been associated with atmospheric GHG concentrations and various other factors (Schneider 2005). This is due to GHG’s

In the study of climatology, there can be distinguished between natural climate variability and anthropogenic climate change. According to the Parliament of Australia (2010) natural climate variability is the influence

Time period: used the current and historic temperature data of 1979 and 2008 and three sets of synthetic 100 year weather record representing climatic conditions likely to occur within the next 30 years (Historical, Present and future time period)