Global warming is the ‘talk of the town’ in this century, with its detrimental effects already being brought to limelight by the recurring events of massive floods, annihilating droughts and ravaging cyclones throughout the globe. The average global temperatures are higher than they have ever been during the past millennium, and the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have crossed all previous records. A scrutiny of the past records of 100 years indicates that India figures in the first 10 in the world in terms of fatalities and economic losses in a variety of climatic disasters. Before embarking on a detailed analysis of Global warming and its impacts on Indian climate, we should first know what climate, green house effect and global warming actually mean.
CLIMATE:
The climate is defined as’ the general or average weather conditions of a certain region, including temperature, rainfall, and wind’. The earth’s climate is most affected by latitude, the tilt of the Earth's axis, the movements of the Earth's wind belts, and the difference in temperatures of land and sea, and topography. Human activity, especially relating to actions relating to the depletion of the ozone layer, is also an important factor. The climate system is a complex, interactive system consisting of the atmosphere, land surface, snow and ice, oceans and other bodies of water, and living things.
GREEN HOUSE EFFECT:
Green House effect is the phenomenon whereby the earth's atmosphere traps solar radiation, and is mediated by the presence in the atmosphere of gases such as carbon dioxide, water vapor, and methane that allow incoming sunlight to pass through, but absorb the heat radiated back from the earth's surface. Thus the Green house gases (GHGs) provide a blanketing effect in the lower strata of the earth’s atmosphere, and this blanketing effect is being enhanced because of the human activities like burning of fossil fuels etc.
GLOBAL WARMING:
‘Global warming is defined as an