Climate zone

“ Mountain Climate.—In the torrid zone altitude is chiefly important because of its effect in tempering the heat of the lowlands, especially at night. If tropical mountains are high enough, they carry snow all the year round, even on the equator, and the zones of vegetation may range from the densest tropical forest at their base to the snow on their summits. The highlands and mountains within the tropics are thus often sharply contrasted with the lowlands, and offer more agreeable and more healthy conditions for white settlement. ”

“ In effecting these nice differentiations of local types, climate is nearly always one of the factors at work, emphasizing perhaps an existing ethnic difference. Even the slight variations of temperature to be found in the same zone or the same climatic region produce distinct results, especially where they are harnessed, as is usually the case, with some other geographic condition of relief, area or soil, pulling in the same direction. ”

“ Beyond the sorts of gradual changes we have already experienced, global warming raises additional threats of large-scale changes, either changes to the global climate system, such as the disappearance of late-summer Arctic sea ice and the melting of large glacial ice sheets, or ecosystem impacts of climate change, such as critical endangerment or extinction of a large number of species. ”

“ This is also one advantage of a varied relief, especially in the Tropics, where all the zones may be compressed into a small area on the slopes of high mountains like the Andes and Kilimanjaro. Climate fixes the boundaries of human habitation in Arctic latitudes and high altitudes by drawing the dead-line to all organic life. It dominates life in steppes and torrid deserts as in sub-polar wastes. It encourages intimacy with the sea in tropical Malays and Polynesians, and like a slave-driver, scourges on the fur-clad Eskimo to reap the harvest of the deep. ”

“ To achieve the ultimate objective of the Convention to stabilize greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, we shall, recognizing the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius, on the basis of equity and in the context of sustainable development, enhance our long-term cooperative action to combat climate change. ”

“ What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago. We do know that the Arctic ice cap is melting faster than was predicted even five years ago. We do know that there have been extraordinarily -- there have been an extraordinarily large number of severe weather events here in North America, but also around the globe. And I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions. ”

“ All these direct and indirect effects of climate may combine to produce ultimate politico-geographical results which manifest themselves in the expansion, power and permanence of states.
Climate limits the habitable area.
Climatic conditions limit the habitable area of the earth. This is their most important anthropo-geographic effect. At either pole lurks an invincible foe, with whom expanding humanity must always reckon, and who brooks little encroachment upon his territory. His weapon is the restriction of organic life, without which man cannot exist. ”

“ Despite the general consensus that some amount of warming is highly likely, extensive scientific and economic uncertainty makes predicting and evaluating its effects extremely difficult. Because climate is generally a regional phenomenon, the effects of warming would vary by region. ”

“ After reviewing the latest evidence on the greenhouse effect in October 1985 at a meeting in Villach, Austria, organized by the WMO, UNEP, and ICSU, scientists from 29 industrialized and developing countries concluded that climate change must be considered a 'plausible and serious probability'. ”

“ The chief effect of a varied relief is a varied climate. This changes with altitude in much the same way as with latitude. Heat and absolute humidity diminish, generally speaking, as height increases, while rainfall becomes greater up to a certain level. The effect of ascending and descending currents of air is to diminish the range of temperature on mountain slopes and produce rather an oceanic type of climate. The larger and more uniform a climatic district, the more conspicuously do even slight elevations form climatic islands, like the Harz Mountains in the North German lowlands. ”

“ Scientists generally agree that the observed warming is roughly consistent with the expected effects of changing concentrations of greenhouse gases and other emissions. However, other phenomena also appear to be influencing the Earth’s climate—for example, variations in the Sun’s brightness and magnetic field, and poorly understood fluctuations in the circulation of the oceans. ”

“ Some could be relatively minor and some severe in their impact: warming could raise sea levels; expand the potential range of tropical diseases; disrupt agriculture, forestry, and natural ecosystems; and increase the variability and extremes of regional weather. There is also some possibility of unexpected, abrupt shifts in climate. Actual outcomes will probably be somewhere in the middle of the range of possibilities, but the longer that emissions grow unchecked, the larger the effects are likely to be. ”

“ To develop the intuition, first suppose that the tipping point is a known temperature increase, say 3° Celsius above preindustrial levels, and that the economic consequences of crossing the tipping point are severe, and temporarily put aside other reasons for reducing carbon emissions. ”

“ Some of the uncertainty is scientific. For a given amount of greenhouse gas emissions, what portion will accumulate in the atmosphere? How much will a given change in those concentrations affect the global climate? How will that global change be distributed throughout the world, and how rapidly will it occur? How much will regional climate change affect sea level, agriculture, forestry, fishing, water resources, disease risks, and natural ecosystems? ”

“ They are expressing their willingness to sacrifice some other benefits—cheap timber, for example—for the benefit of knowing that the forest or species will be preserved.↑ The atmosphere is a partly renewable resource because the oceans can indefinitely absorb only limited amounts of greenhouse gases. Beyond those limits, the gases begin to build up in the atmosphere and gradually affect the climate. (For carbon dioxide, the limit appears to be roughly a billion metric tons of carbon per year.) ”

“ It is, upon the whole, not probable that so small an extent of forest, so situated, could produce a sensible influence on the general climate of the globe, though it might appreciably affect the local action of all climatic elements. The total annual amount of solar heat absorbed and radiated by the earth, and the sum of terrestrial evaporation and atmospheric precipitation, must be supposed constant; but the distribution of heat and of humidity is exposed to disturbance in both time and place by a multitude of local causes, among which the presence or absence of the forest is doubtless one. ”

“ Given the its central role in the global carbon cycle, any feedback mechanism that negatively impacts the ocean’s ability to act as a carbon sink is likely to make an appreciable difference to the future of the climate in general. ”

“ The consequence of this climatic control, therefore, is not only a narrowed distribution of the human race, but a concentration which intensifies the struggle for existence, forces the utilization of all the available area, and thereby in every locality stimulates adaptation to environment.
Adaptability of man to climatic extremes.
Man ranks among the most adaptable organic beings on the earth. No climate is absolutely intolerable to him. ”

“ A land may be interesting for many other reasons besides nearness or remoteness from the equator; but that which is of the greatest interest of all to the historian is a consideration of the manifold and far-reaching effects of climate.
The study of human geography teaches us that climate affects mankind in two ways. First, it produces a direct effect upon individuals, races, indeed the inhabitants of entire zones, influencing their bodily conditions, their characters, and their minds; in the second place, it produces an indirect effect by its influence on conditions necessary to life. ”

“ The accumulation of those gases is changing the composition of the atmosphere and is probably contributing to a gradual warming of the Earth’s climate—the characteristic weather conditions that prevail in various regions of the world. Scientists generally agree that continued population growth and economic development over the next century will result in substantially more greenhouse gas emissions and further warming unless measures are taken to constrain those emissions. ”

“ When one type of climate extends monotonously over a vast area, as in Russia. Siberia, Central Asia or immense tracts of Africa, the differences of temperature which prick and stimulate national endeavor in small climatic districts here lose much of their force. Their effects flatten out into insignificance, overwhelmed by the encounter with too large a territory. All the southern continents are handicapped by the monotony of their zonal location. ”

“ To begin, we should note that as some skeptics [14] of anthropogenic climate change have pointed out, the term “greenhouse effect” is somewhat misleading: the mechanics of the effect bear only a passing resemblance to the mechanics of man-made greenhouses. Artificial greenhouses are kept warmer than the ambient environment primarily through a suppression of convection: that is, the glass in the greenhouse prevents warm air—which is less dense than cold air, and so will tend to rise above it—from rising away from ground level, and thus keeps conditions warmer than they would be otherwise. ”

“ The CO2e targets translate roughly into ranges of temperature changes as estimated by climate models and into the cumulative GHG emissions budgets discussed in some other climate literature. More stringent concentration targets decrease the odds that global average temperature exceeds 2°C above preindustrial levels by 2100. ”

“ Points to the need to diversify lines of research and preventive measures to avoid effects on human health and safety, floods, drought, fires - particularly in forests and protected areas - a decline in biodiversity and economic losses; calls on the Member States and the Commission to take account of the importance of forests and farming in absorbing carbon, slowing down erosion, providing resources and ultimately regulating the climate ”

“ If a period of cold is inaugurated and glaciers advance to an ultimate position, they can retreat only through change of climate effected either by general causes or by topographic development to the point where the snowfields become restricted in size. In the case of climatic change the ice changes are periodic. In the case of retreat due to topographic change there should be a steady or non-periodic falling back of the ice front as the catchment basins decrease in elevation and the snow-gathering ridges tributary to them are reduced in height. ”

“ The evidence from coffee farmers, from numerous coffee growing regions around the world, is that they are already suffering from the influences increased warming [12] , [11] . Precise modelling of the influence of climate change for either Arabica or robusta is limited. So far work has been largely restricted to climatic envelope forecasting based on optimum and suboptimum (tolerable) temperature and rainfall averages [11] , [13] , although in Sao Paulo (Brazil) future climatic scenarios have been applied across the federal agricultural zoning system for cultivated Arabica [10] . ”

“ Fourth Assessment Report showed that global anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gasses have increased 70% between 1970 and 2004, and anthropogenic emissions are very likely the cause of global climate change. ”

“ Weather includes very hot or cold or rainy days, while extreme weather events include extended droughts, floods, heatwaves, coldwaves, and intense tropical storms. Climate change reflects nonrandom change in climate measured over several decades or longer. Climate variability reflects the way that climate fluctuates above or below long term average values. ”

“ When considered as a whole, the historical and statistical evidence suggests that a warmer global climate—as well as the period during which warming occurred—could have both beneficial and harmful effects. One global effect would be generally harmful: sea levels would rise as glaciers melted and the oceans warmed and expanded. The gradual inundation of seashores would create problems for countries (particularly low-lying island nations) , regions, and cities that were mostly near sea level. ”

“ Increasing release of carbon stores in soils and permafrost: Northern permafrost contains enough carbon to trigger a positive feedback response to warming temperatures. With an estimated stock of 1700-1800 Gt, the permafrost carbon stock could amplify considerably human-induced climate change. ”