6.3C - Fossil Fuel Combustion
The process of fossil fuel combustion has altered the balance of carbon pathways and stores with implications for climate, ecosystems and the hydrological cycle.
Fossil fuels have been burnt to provide energy and power at increasing rates since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-eighteenth century. Fossil fuel combustion is the number one threat to the global carbon cycle. It is changing the balance of both the carbon stores and the fluxes.
Implications for Climate
It is estimated that about half the extra emissions of carbon dioxide since 1750 have remained in the atmosphere. The rest have been fluxed from the atmosphere into the stores provided by the oceans, ecosystems and soils. The rate of carbon fluxing has sped up.
Additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and its impact on the greenhouse effect that is largely responsible for a number of climate changes:
- a rise in the mean global temperature
- more precipitation and evaporation
- sudden shifts in weather patterns
- more extreme weather events, such as floods, storm surges and droughts
- the nature of climate change is varying from region to region - some areas are becoming warmer and drier and others wetter
Implications for Ecosystems
These changes in climate have serious knock-on effects on:
- sea level: this is rising because of melting ice sheets and glaciers; many major coastal cities around the world are under threat from flooding by the sea
- ecosystems: a decline in the goods and services they provide; a decline in biodiversity; changes in the distributions of species; marine organisms threatened by lower oxygen levels and ocean acidification; the bleaching of corals etc.
Implications for the Hydrological Cycle
- increased temperatures and evaporation rates cause more moisture to circulate around the cycle.