The physical state of the atmosphere or the Earth’s climate system at a given point on the globe at a specific moment in time. Characteristics of the atmospheric state include air temperature, pressure, wind speed, humidity, precipitation, sunshine, and cloud cover, as well as fog, frost, hail, and other weather elements.
It is the set of weather conditions over several decades (30-40 years) for a specific geographical area. While weather changes quickly, climate changes much more slowly. Climate is characterized by a wide range of meteorological parameters, and depending on their values, climate is often classified as tropical, mid-latitude maritime, arid, etc.
Earth’s climate is a system in a dynamically stable state — a dynamic equilibrium. As long as the planetary mechanism that sustains the climate keeps working, it fluctuates around normal values; if this mechanism is disrupted, climate stability is also disrupted.
The mechanism that ensures the balance of chemical substances in the atmosphere was discovered for chemical reactions and became known as the Le Chatelier principle. This principle applies to the climate system and maintains the balance of chemical substances in the atmosphere.
Natural ecosystems, and primarily natural forests, play the main role in this process.
The principle works as follows: if a large release of carbon dioxide or another chemical substance occurs somewhere, a healthy ecosystem will begin to intensively absorb it.
The fluctuation of climate parameters over the past few million years has not exceeded the limits that allow Life to exist on our planet.
Diagram: “Planetary temperature 100 million years ago and forecast to 2100”
The emergence of plants, evolution, and the growth in the diversity and number of photosynthesizing organisms — whose life activity produced free oxygen as a byproduct — ultimately led to a radical change in the gas composition of the atmosphere and the emergence of plants and animals onto land.
Diagram: “Change in atmosphere types and the emergence of the possibility for higher plants and animals to move onto land as a result of the life activity of photosynthesizing autotrophs”
Only microscopic organisms lived in Biosphere-I; in particular, the left side of the image shows the chemosynthetic bacteria Cl. sporopenitum and Thiothrix. The emergence of photosynthesizing cyanobacteria allowed the entire diversity of multicellular life to develop; the right side of the image shows cyanobacteria of the genus Nostoc, the spirillum Desulfotomaculum, trilobites, horsetail and spruce forests, a mammoth, a wolf, and modern humans — all of these are representatives of Biosphere-II.
All human attempts to make progress in this area fail to provide a technological substitute for the natural mechanism of biotic regulation. Moreover, everything we call cultivated land, arable land, gardens, parks, etc. are all anthropogenic ecosystems that negatively affect the functioning of the biotic environmental control mechanism. They do not create life — they only destroy and use it.
A “mature ecosystem” maintains the current composition of the atmosphere and ensures the stabilization and regulation of climate.
Neither the shape of the Earth, nor its rotation, nor the unevenness of its surface has a direct bearing on the stability of the Earth’s climate. The forces that ensure this stability can only be created by Life itself — undisturbed.
Over the past 10,000 years, the average temperature on the planet has remained fairly stable, varying by less than 1°C, thereby allowing human civilization to reach today’s most optimal figure of 15°C. However, the absolute success of our civilization may have a destructive effect on the climate, which up to now has been exceptionally beneficial for us.
The problem we face today is that, since the start of the industrial revolution 250 years ago, greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere have been changing its physical and chemical properties at an unprecedented rate. This has caused the sharpest change in atmospheric composition in the last 650,000 years. Despite our significant efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, global climate change will continue at a rapid pace over the coming decades and beyond, with the likely amplitude of temperature fluctuations exceeding limits acceptable to us.
Diagram: “Global temperature trend across Kyrgyzstan over the entire period of instrumental observations, in degrees Celsius”
Objective data on the diagnosis of the environmental situation shows that symptoms of global negative processes can be traced across Kyrgyzstan, primarily related to land degradation and the reduction of biological diversity.
The International UN Climate Change Conference was held November 29 – December 11, 2011, in the Mexican city of Cancun. 15,000 people gathered for the 16th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 6th session of the Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The set of decisions known as the Cancun Agreements lays the foundation for the long-term implementation of collective efforts to address climate change. At the negotiations, all countries acknowledged the predominantly anthropogenic and negative nature of climate change over the past 20-30 years and in the 21st century as a whole. All countries are striving to avoid the most negative consequences of climate change.
The greenhouse effect is called this because the Earth’s atmosphere acts like the walls and roof of a greenhouse. In a greenhouse, solar energy (mostly in the form of light) passes through the glass walls and roof, reaches the ground, and heats it. When sunlight passes through the atmosphere and, partially scattered by cloud systems, reaches the Earth’s surface, it heats the surface and the lower layers of the atmosphere. The heated Earth then begins to emit energy itself, but now in the form of heat rather than light. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere absorb the thermal energy reflected by the Earth’s surface and send part of it back to the surface, creating conditions for additional heating. The “blanket” of greenhouse gases in the troposphere, making up less than one percent of the entire atmosphere, performs a vital function in regulating the planet’s climate. This results in the “natural greenhouse effect,” which keeps the planet’s temperature 30°C higher than it would be without this effect — something we know has a significant impact on life as a whole.
Over the past half-century, a strengthening of the greenhouse effect has been observed, with a global character. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is steadily increasing. The increase in greenhouse gas emissions is a consequence of accelerated development in the world following the industrial revolution of the 18th-19th centuries.
According to scientists’ calculations (Kondratyev et al., 2003), anthropogenic greenhouse gases are smaller in volume than natural ones, which are formed primarily as a result of the respiration of all living organisms, volcanic activity, and other natural processes. This leads to the conclusion that greenhouse gases do not create the climate, but only modify it.
Diagram: “Main anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gases”
According to research by our scientists, the sectors most affected by climate change in Kyrgyzstan are identified as:
Recommendations for the public have been developed to prevent the negative consequences of climate change. Following these simple actions can significantly reduce the likelihood of negative impacts from the projected risks associated with climate change.
