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Global warming: Cause and effect

and the mountains would raise the sea level, threatening the lives of thousand living in and around the coastal areas.

The melting of Arctic would release huge amounts of fresh water into the North Atlantic Ocean, which would disrupt the Gulf Stream, which may even destabilize the Thermohaline circulation. The thermohaline circulation, which normally flows between the tropics and the poles, would collapse; and would trigger a localized cooling in the North Atlantic and lead to either cooling or warming, in that particular region.

Western Siberia is the world's largest permafrost peat bog, formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. The melting of this permafrost would release as much as 70,000 million tones of methane, an extremely effective greenhouse gas; which would further expedite the process of global warming.

The ocean serves as a sink for carbon dioxide, taking in large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but increase levels of CO2 have led to ocean acidification. Furthermore, as the temperature of the oceans increases, they become less able to absorb excess CO2. When CO2 is dissolved in water, it forms a weak Carbonic acid depending upon the concentration of CO2 being dissolved; however as the concentration of CO2 increases, the strength of Carbonic acid grows. As a result of the increased acidification marine organisms and the corals would die from action of bleaching.

Methane clathrate is a form of water ice that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure. Extremely large deposits of methane clathrate are found under the sediments on the ocean floors, and as the ocean gets warmer, this methane clathrate would melt, releasing large amounts of methane. As methane is much more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the sudden release of large amounts of methane would trigger a catastrophic climate change, by increasing the global temperature by an additional 5 degree in itself.

The continual retreat of the glaciers in the mountains would greatly threaten the quantity of water that would eventually flow in the rivers. A slight change in the seasonal melting of the glacier can have powerful impacts on the areas that rely on freshwater runoff from the mountains. Rising temperature can cause snow to melt earlier and faster in the spring and shift the timing and distribution of the runoff. These changes could affect the availability of freshwater for natural systems and human uses.

Increase in sea


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