The Apocalyptic Dimensions of Climate Change

Jan Alber

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9783111269764
• eBook ISBN: 9783110730289
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Climate change and the apocalypse are frequently associated in the popular imagination of the twenty-first century. This collection of essays brings together climatologists, theologians, historians, literary scholars, and philosophers to address and critically assess this association. The contributing authors are concerned, among other things, with the relation between cultural and scientific discourses on climate change; the role of apocalyptic images and narratives in representing environmental issues; and the tension between reality and fiction in apocalyptic representations of catastrophes. By focusing on how figures in fictional texts interact with their environment and deal with the consequences of climate change, this volume foregrounds the broader social and cultural function of apocalyptic narratives of climate change. By evoking a sense of collective human destiny in the face of the ultimate catastrophe, apocalyptic narratives have both cautionary and inspirational functions. Determining the extent to which such narratives square with scientific knowledge of climate change is one of the main aims of this book.

Scenarios of Human-Induced Climate and Environmental Changes at Different Spatial and Temporal Scales

Wolfgang Römer

1 Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of different reaction paths of environmental systems on human induced climate change in different climatic zones. Climate change influences several environmental systems on earth, encompassing the dynamics of the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, pedosphere, and their associated subsystems. The interaction of the processes in different environments depends on the state of the natural process-response system. However, natural process-response systems in nearly all parts of the world have been changed to various degrees by agriculture, mining, industry, and the associated infrastructure. The superimposition of climate change and human interference in natural process-response systems in different climatic zones results in a spatially and temporally non-uniform response of the process dynamics with different reaction and relaxation patterns at various spatial and temporal scales. On a global scale, human-induced climate warming resulted in an increase of temperature of about 1 °C in the last 100 years. However, the increase in temperature has not been uniform.

Environmental effects of climate warming vary in individual regions as a function of the process realms and the temporal and spatial scales considered. The rate of temperature increase in arctic regions is higher than in mid-latitude, sub-tropical, and tropical climate zones and appears to have influenced the processes in the biosphere, pedosphere, and the rate of surface denudation processes. Reduced amounts in rainfall are predicted for subtropical areas whereas some mid-latitude regions are likely to experience an increase in rainfall. This tendency results in an increasing contrast between regions with high and low rainfall amounts as well as in changes of the seasonal distribution of rainfalls. These changes may strongly influence the fluvial system and the hydrologic balance. Although, sea-level change threatens coastal areas globally, the sensitivity to sea-level rise and climate warming of coastal areas depends on a complex set of factors. The response on an increasing sea-level varies with coastal type, the intensity of human interference in the coastal environment, and the climate setting.

The results of this overview show that human interference in the process dynamics of the different ecosystems affects different process systems in different regions and climatic zones. Climate change is likely to become an additional factor that interacts with the changed environmental dynamics of the natural processes. The combined effects of changed environmental conditions tend to increase the frequency of hazardous events as the natural process-response-systems will adjust constantly to the changing conditions.

One of the biggest issues facing the Earth’s environments is the anthropogenic induced climate change. The human induced global warming results mostly from the release of greenhouse gases. As climate is a major controlling factor in terrestrial and marine ecosystems, climate change will affect numerous processes at the earth surface and may induce profound effects on future environments. Human induced climate change is often closely allied with human interference in natural environments. Human interferences include various forms of land use, raw material extraction, the development of infrastructure, waste disposal, and pollution. The interplay of the combined effects of changed environmental conditions and the increasing rate of anthropogenic land transformation has affected the feedback-controlled interaction of the natural processes. This has resulted in an increasing frequency of extreme events such as floods, landslides, heavy rainfall, or droughts.

The scenarios and projections of the IPCC clearly indicate that in several regions of the world climate change will increase the intensity and frequency of extreme events in the future (IPCC 2007). However, the effects of climate change will vary regionally and locally as a function of the environmental setting and the intensity of the changes in climate variables whilst, at the same time, the intensity of the impact and sensitivity to changes is also controlled by the different degrees of human landscape modifications. The objective of this chapter is to show that both, climate change and human interference into earth surface systems, has affected the process dynamics in different regions and climatic zones, and that the superimposition of human interferences often results in a higher sensitivity to climate change.

However, a comprehensive evaluation and description of all effects at all temporal and spatial scales of environmental and climatic changes is beyond the scope of this chapter. Alone the reports of the IPCC are based on a contribution of more than 230 authors and co-authors whilst the reports often include more than 600 references from various fields of research and there are numerous detailed studies in scientific journals and books concerning environmental and climate change which cover nearly all parts of the world.

2 Anthropogenic Climate Change and Greenhouse Effect

2.1 Global Warming and Greenhouse Gases

Global warming is often used as a synonym for climate change though it induces climate change as global warming affects other factors such as the moisture content in the atmosphere, rainfall, and the development of air pressure systems and is associated with complex feedbacks in the atmospheric circulation system and at the earth surface.

Global warming has been proved by empirical data from instrumental sources, proxy data, statistical analyses, and results of climate modeling. According to these studies, the principal contributors to atmospheric warming are carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), a number of trace gases, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), as well as other pollutants including dust (Huddart and Stott 2020). Although geologic records of the past indicate that climate has changed during various times in earth history, data from archives in polar ice sheets show that the rise in most greenhouse gases in the post-industrial period is higher than at least in the past 800,000 years (Glaser 2014). In the last 10,000 years, the global mean concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere was at about 280 ppmv (parts per million by volume, 1 ppmv = 0.0001 % of the volume). Since the 1950s, the CO₂ concentration increased continuously from about 320 ppmv to 400 ppmv in the year 2013 (Dlugokencky et al. 2019) and 407.5 ± 0.1 ppmv in 2018.

Global warming is a function of the complex interplay of solar radiation, dynamic processes, and variable gases in the atmosphere such as CO₂, CH₄, N₂O, water vapor (H2O), and CFCs. The dynamic processes include the energy received by absorption of direct solar radiation and earth radiation as well as the fluxes of sensible and latent heat resulting from conduction of heat at the surface, heat transfer by condensation and turbulent transport, and various feedbacks between the hydrosphere and the earth surface. The most important process for global warming is the anthropogenic increased greenhouse effect. In the atmosphere, variable gases such as CO₂, CH₄, N₂O, and H₂O, including suspended water droplets and ice crystals in clouds, are effective absorbers of infrared radiation. As each of these gases has characteristic absorption ranges, a different proportion is filtered out from the incoming solar radiation as a function of wavelength. The spectrum of the radiation emitted from the sun, on the other hand, ranges from long radio waves down to extremely short wave length radiation with a length of less than 10⁻¹⁰ m, with a maximum emission at 10 µm (Hidore and Oliver 1993; Weischet and Endlicher 2012). Most greenhouse gases except ozone (O₃) and nitrogen (N), which absorb at 0.01 to 0.38 µm and 0.5 µm respectively, are virtually transparent for the incoming ultraviolet and visible range of the solar radiation (Fig. 2). As a consequence, radiation of this wavelength penetrates through the atmosphere and is virtually unaffected by greenhouse gases. The passage of the solar radiation through the atmosphere to the Earth surface is controlled by various processes. Part of the solar radiation is scattered and reflected in the atmosphere on molecules, particulate matter, and clouds whilst another part is transmitted. At the earth surface, a part of the radiation is reflected while another part is absorbed. On a global scale, the sum of radiation reflected in the atmosphere and at the earth’s surface (global albedo) is in the range of 30 % of the total incoming solar radiation (Fig. 1). This portion of the radiation cannot contribute to the warming.

Fig. 1: Simplified energy balance of the Earth. (Modified after Hidore and Oliver, 1993: 34, and Weischet and Endlicher, 2012).

Fig. 2: Selective absorptivity of some greenhous gases and water vapor. (Modified after Weischet and Endlicher, 2012).

The absorption of the solar radiation at the earth surface, on the other hand, converts the radiation to other forms of energ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• The Apocalyptic Dimensions of Climate Change between the Disciplines
• Scenarios of Human-Induced Climate and Environmental Changes at Different Spatial and Temporal Scales
• The Apocalyptic Imagination and Climate Change
• Narrative and the Texture of Catastrophe
• Hindu Apocalyptic Notions, Cultural Discourses, and Climate Change
• The Desert Wasteland and Climate Change in Mad Max: Fury Road
• Drawing (on) the Future: Narration, Animation, and the Partially Human
• Environmental Sciences, Apocalyptic Thought, and the Proxy of God
• Four Cosmopolitical Ideas for an Unworlded World
• Climate Change, the Apocalypse, and Other Ideologies in The Day after Tomorrow
• Biographical Information
• Subject Index
• Name Index