The complication of managing the Earth's atmosphere

By Bambang Hidayat

BANDUNG (JP): Our comforting belief that the earth's climate was essentially unchanged through the ages has been shot down. Meteorological data compiled over the past century, augmented by recent findings from space observation of the earth, shows convincingly that the earth is warming and that its atmosphere has undergone continuous change.

Careful analysis indicates conclusively that the world's climate cooled down from about 1940 to 1970. Since then the temperature has been on the increase. There has been a growing realization that significant climatic changes have occurred on earth in a broad spectrum of time, ranging from decades to some million of years.

Astronomically speaking, the changes of the longer periods are not unexpected, but observed changes of a shorter time scale affect us more because they impinge on our lives.

Studying short and long-period atmospheric changes is not only important as an intellectual exercise to understand the past climatic change on our planet, but also extremely useful for practical reasons in order to predict the future of humankind.

Problems related to harvests are a good example. In many areas, in particular in developing countries, the harvest is closely linked to survival, whether it be on local or regional levels. Prolonged disturbances of weather in some areas may affect regional or even national life patterns.

Good crops are indeed results of the combination of weather, input technology and social planning. Disruption of one of these factors will change the expected yields, if there is no additional input for other undisrupted factors. Foresight on these three aspects is therefore a necessary ingredient for understanding crops.

Our highly agricultural system in the latter half of the 20th century -- driven by the heavy use of technology to manipulate natural environment -- may have created our ignorance about the very basic factors affecting good crops. This results in a feeling that our life and activities are insulated from the long range weather variations. Some of us are inclined to think the sources of our staple foods come from a nearby grocery, rather than from lands which farmers cultivate.

Millions of people still depend directly on land and on weather-dependent harvests. Statistics on world hunger and malnutrition are still frightful despite the input technology, the green revolution introduced since the 1960s. It appears that many who suffer famine are from areas which are deprived, momentarily or permanently, of "good" weather and scientific knowledge about weather and meteorology.

It has been shown by agricultural scientists responsible for the green revolution that the dramatic increase in world agricultural productivity was only temporary in order to buy a little more time for humanity to solve the problem of nutrition. Experience showed that in order to achieve an additional increase of crops, more energy is needed so that the machinery of climate- crop-consumer operates properly.

History has its examples. In the winter of 1977, Florida and California, two major winter vegetable producing regions in the U.S., were hit by, respectively, frost and drought which caused crop yields to drop below necessary levels. In 1972, global weather was erratic due to a solar disturbance. This climatic anomaly resulted in a harsh winter followed by a dry, hot summer in many northern countries, as well as monsoon failures in India and Indonesia. The total world food production was estimated to drop by 2 percent to 3 percent. Still vivid in our memory is the 1997 drought in the country which caused low rice yield.

Weather is an important ingredient in conducting human affair. Now, as our awareness increases, we are entering an era characterized by syndromes of global change that stem from the interdependence between human development and climate. The change of lifestyle in human communities may bring about change and should aim at the improvement of the environment. In turn, the new outlook embraces the ethics in which human beings view our natural environment as the most reliable partner to produce a rich ecological variety to sustain life on earth. Otherwise our task as the custodian of life on earth could not be fulfilled.

Global change, as it manifests in the warming of the earth's atmosphere, will affect us all. The important thing is to realize that the effect of global change may be creeping slowly and producing different results in different geographic settings. Poor and rich people, on a national as well as on a regional scale, are likely to place different values on economic growth and environmental conservation.

It would take a long time before we can build a consensus about interactions between people and the atmospheric environmental. It should be managed in tandem with the ideals of sustainable development.

Two major areas of global concern, namely the changing atmosphere and development of living environment in developing countries, must be addressed without delay and in proper perspective.

They must be solved to bridge the understanding between the developed and less developed countries.

Fossil fuel

Concerns are the use of fossil fuel in developed countries and the atmospheric pollution in developing countries. Rapid and unfettered economic growth fueled by vast quantities of fossil fuels in developed countries, and the widespread damaged stimulated by poverty and high population growth in many developing countries, have caused worrisome increase in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

This may produce shifts in climate. Man has learned how to cope with gradual change rather easily, but a sudden, disruptive, abnormality requires better social preparations and understanding between government agencies and the food-producing sectors.

The threat of global climate change with its accompanying biological, economic and social disruptions will make the goals of sustainable development farther away for many nations.

Deforestation

Mismanagement of tropical forests has been considered the culprit of atmospheric damage. Tropical forests provide a wealth of goods and services. They contain a substantial bank of stored carbon and form important reservoirs of biological diversity. Due to the pressure of population and economic imperatives, deforestation is occurring in many areas in the tropics.

The result of the deforestation is believed to contribute to the buildup of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Estimates of the contribution of tropical deforestation to global carbon dioxide buildup vary considerably and, most likely, half of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is derived from the use of fossil fuels.

The uncertainties associated with estimating this figure are due to the difficulties involved in estimating the global conversion rate. Factors like vegetation regrowth, carbon content of various forest types and the rate of flux of carbon between vegetation and atmosphere combine and should not be overlooked.

Forests are not only regulators of the atmospheric transfer of latent heat and moisture but also processors of trace gases and, at the same time, an economic asset. So are the fossil fuels and the production of other greenhouse gases. Planning of economic growth will therefore implicitly touch these matters.

Unfortunately, many of the discussions related to economic growth result in a national policy which inadvertently accelerates the rate of fossil fuel consumption and deforestation. The policy should be reviewed critically before we loose our most valuable natural assets of tropical forest which store so much genetic and valuable biodiversity.

Economic growth is, on the other hand, a battle cry with which a nation brings prosperity to her people. It is therefore understandable that taming economic growth would be a political drawback; it is the last action a politician can afford to do.

A political view should be weighed against long-term development and global issues of public property, such as the wealth of forestry. In a sense one should be more aware of the future of our nationhood and the uniqueness of Earth as the natural habitat for humankind.

With increasing concern about global climate change, which may lead to global warming effects due to imbalance in the carbon cycle, studies have been made to find out how to reduce the carbon emission to the atmosphere. This implies the study of less energy-intensive technologies and less carbon-intensive fuels.

It is gratifying to know that such aspects have been taken seriously and that studies under various economics and demographic conditions have been carried out.

However, one should not forget that the atmosphere is in fact a very complicated laboratory where many chemical reactions are taking place. There is still room for "speculation" about atmospheric chemistry, but progress in atmospheric sciences is already encouraging, making people more aware of our atmosphere.

At the same time, the atmospheric science should encourage development of natural science in our country and should foster international cooperation. This provides a forum for Indonesian scientists to participate in worldwide science undertakings.

We have embarked upon what are called "large-scale geophysical experiments", which lead to the birth of new ethics of using and exploiting natural resources as well as science of other global- warming related phenomena.

Indonesia is keenly aware of the adverse effects of the global warming. Policies are being developed in order to accommodate the impact of this global phenomena. However, more atmospheric research and monitoring are needed in order to secure our position in the world's scientific community.

The writer is head of Bosscha Observatory and a lecturer in the School of Astronomy, Bandung Institute of Technology.