Air Pollution Impacts on Weather and Climate

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Causes of air pollution
Effects of Air Pollution on Weather Patterns and Climatic Changes
Conclusion
Reference List

Introduction

Air pollution is among the many factors that cause atmospheric destructions across the world. Air pollution leads to gaseous imbalances in the atmosphere, which cause chemical reactions amongst different gas molecules.

These chemical reactions produce intense heat in the atmosphere, hence rendering into abnormal increases in the temperatures across the world. Air pollution is rated to be the major cause of discomfort in the living creatures of the world for air is essential for the survival of every living creature. Therefore, distress in the environment due to air pollution causes discomfort in all living creatures and worst still cause deaths.

Causes of air pollution

There are various causes of air pollution, which include industrial fumes, agricultural input products, domestic, and urban effluents. Beginning with the industrial fumes, the majority of manufacturing factories emit gaseous fumes into the environment as a byproduct of fuel and chemical combustion that produces the energy necessary for the production processes.

Today’s technology does not have the ability to develop necessary measures of emitting gaseous effluents safely into the environment (Parry, 2007). Instead, there have been proposals concerning various methods of energy saving that is environmentally friendlier but cannot be used for large factories.

Some of the environmental friendlier ways of saving energy include the use of solar and wind-power energies that do not have harmful wastes as compared to other forms of energy production such as the use of diesel generators in factories.

Based on the research results of the United Nations Environmental Program, wastes from industries are the major causes of air pollution. Industries are responsible for emitting the most harmful gases such as sulfuric gases that are highly responsible for the depletion of the earth’s ozone layer.

The research recommended for safer methods of emitting gaseous effluents, which included the introduction of intoxication chambers that contain water for dissolving the gaseous wastes. Sulfuric compounds dissolve in water, thus making the gaseous effluents less harmful to the ozone layer (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2012).

In addition, the research also recommended the shutting down of factories that emitted sulfuric compounds into the atmosphere as a method of trying to save the ozone layer from extreme depletion (Gillespie, 2005). The researchers found that the depletion of the ozone layer also results from human activities.

However, developed nations have contributed highly to the depletion of the ozone layer due to having many industrial activities that emit large amounts of harmful gases into the environment. Hence, the developed nations, which included the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and others leading industrialized nations were said to be the leading in the emitting of harmful gases and chemicals into the atmosphere.

Implementation of the research recommendations seemed a great challenge to the developed nations as it required the creation of novel technologies that would cut down the emission while introducing new methods of emitting such wastes.

Consequently, in the United Nations Climate Change Summit, the developed nations were reluctant of signing the agreement for the implementation of the above recommendations, which showed their resistance in participating in the efforts toward saving our world from climatic changes due to the depletion of the ozone layer.

Secondly, agricultural inputs are considered as causes of environmental pollution especially water, air, and soil pollution. The majority of farmers in today’s world use newly introduced methods of agriculture, which include the use of industrial chemicals inform of pesticides, insecticides, and fertilizers.

Those chemicals emit harmful gases into the environment that contain sulfuric compounds that are responsible for the depletion of the ozone layer. The environmental management organizations, the majority of which are non-governmental organizations have embarked on campaigns that are aimed at sensitizing farmers to adopt organic methods of farming since they are less harmful to the environment.

Various methods through which agricultural inputs deplete the earth’s atmosphere include both biological forms and chemical forms. For the biological forms of environmental depletion, plants are responsible for emitting gaseous wastes that are harmful to the environment.

Plants are normally required to emit either oxygen or carbon dioxide gases into the atmosphere, while harmful agricultural chemicals that are rich in heavy metal compounds such as sulfur compounds destabilize this process leading to the plants emitting sulfuric compounds into the atmosphere. Hence, farm chemicals that contain heavy metallic compounds are harmful, and they cause air pollution.

Domestic and urban effluents are considered to be among the major contributors of the depletion of the ozone layer. The majority of human activities contribute to the depletion of the environment and especially the earth’s atmosphere (McMichael et al., 2003). The research studies conducted by the United Nations Environmental Program showed domestic and urban effluents as the third major contributors to air pollution.

Large quantities of domestic effluents produce harmful gases after being disposed into the environment. For instance, the majority of food packages contain chemicals that are used as food preservatives and when they are disposed of, they react with oxygen and thus produce harmful gases such as ammonia and sulfuric acid gases, both of which are harmful by degrading the environment.

Other human activities that cause air pollution include the use of motor vehicles and other automobiles, which emit harmful gases due to gaseous combustions both at the domestic and urban environments.

Effects of Air Pollution on Weather Patterns and Climatic Changes

There are various harmful effects of air pollution on the lives on earth. Air pollution causes the death of both plants and animals due to discomfort and stress in the air circulation mechanisms (Tol, 2009). The effects of air pollution include weather and climatic changes that have been a major concern to the environmentalists.

Air pollutants that contain sulfuric compounds cause too much depletion of the ozone layer. The ozone layer is responsible for regulating temperatures on the earth’s surface by reducing the heat that the sunrays emit to the earth’s atmosphere.

The depletion of the ozone layer by air pollutants causes the unwanted heat emissions of the sunrays to find their way to the surface of the earth, and hence causing an unwanted rise in the temperatures on the earth’s surface. Scientists refer to that effect of air pollution as the greenhouse effect, which is a comparison to the horticultural greenhouses.

The greenhouse effect is dangerous for animal and plants survival on earth as it leads to abnormal increases in temperatures and hence changing the climatic condition of a place because of increased temperatures (McMichael et al., 2003).

For instance, Polar Regions that are well known to be cold for centuries have been experiencing a rise in temperature that often lead to the melting of icebergs. Such conditions have led to the change in the climatic conditions of the earth’s Polar Regions.

Scientists argue that temperature is the key determinant of the climatic condition of a place for temperature variations determine the movement of winds as temperature rise creates conventional currents of air movement (Johnson, 2012). A rise in the atmospheric temperature raises the temperature of the air particles near to the ground surface, and as a result, they become less dense and rise above the cold particles in the atmosphere.

On the other hand, the cold air temperatures in the atmosphere, being denser than warm air particles, falls to the ground surface to occupy the vacuum left by the warm air particles. The process continues, and hence creating convention currents of air, which in other terms is referred to like the wind. On the other hand, the wind is responsible for the movement of clouds and the direction of their movement.

In most cases, areas that experience high temperatures and are near to large water bodies capable of forming clouds experience high rainfalls due to the presence of winds, and in most cases, such areas experience conventional rainfalls. The prolonged process of temperature various, wind, and rainfall, which in a short-term can be referred to as a change in a weather pattern, leads to the change in the climatic condition of a place.

Conclusion

Natural gases, which form a crucial part of elements that support both human and plant life, are suspended in the Earth’s atmosphere. Therefore, any pollutant getting into the Earth’s atmosphere cause air pollution, which distorts the natural balance of the air components thus leading to chemical reactions in the air. These chemical reactions lead to an increase in the temperatures on the earth’s atmosphere.

Ultimately, the chemical reactions initiate changes in weather patterns across the world in a phenomenon that can explain the current global warming trends. Prolonged changes in the weather patterns lead to the change in climatic conditions of a place.

There are various causes of air pollution, which include industrial fumes, agricultural input products, domestic, and urban effluents. Finally, air pollution causes the death of both plants and animals due to discomfort and stress in the air circulation mechanisms.

Reference List

Gillespie, A. (2005). Climate change, ozone depletion and air pollution: legal commentaries within the context of science and policy. Leiden, Dutch: Brill Publishers.

Johnson, S. (2012). UNEP the first 40 years. New York, NY: United Nations Environmental Programme.

McMichael, A., Campbell-Lendrum, D., Corvalan, C., & Ebi, K. (2003), Climate Change and Human Health. Risks and Responses. Washington D.C: World Health Organization.

Parry, M. (2007). Climate change 2007: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability: working group II contribution to the fourth assessment report of the IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. London, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Tol, R. (2009). The Economics Effects of Climate Change. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 23(2), 29-51.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2012). Six Common Air Pollutants. Web.

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