Zmena klímy – možný dopad (nielen) na obyvateľstvo - Prohuman

CLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS IMPACTS – CRITICAL APPROACH
Zbigniew Ustrnul
Abstract
The article presents some key issues concerning contemporary climate change problems.
It concerns the reasons of the heated debate about climate change and variability
in recent years all over the world. Problems of climatic data inhomogeneity,
modeling and future climate scenarios and projections are discussed. The special
attention is paid to the uncertainty of future climate projections and its impacts.
Key words: climate change, climate impacts, scenarios, uncertainty
INTRODUCTION
Climate changes – a scientific or unspecified term?
Climate changes are certainly one of the key challenges of the contemporary
world. Various research centres, state and international administrative bodies,
social and environmental organisations effort to define these specific “Grand
Challenges.” One of the most prominent organisations is The International Council
for Science (ICSU). In its report, it stresses the importance of climatic changes,
related to the global ones, and suggests activities required for achieving sustainable
development (ICSU 2010). It is not surprising that the term is one of the
most frequently mentioned in scientific literature, including Earth sciences an
climatology in particular. The problem of climate change is widely recognized,
yet judging by numerous publications, discussions and mass media reports, it
may be questioned whether the term is used properly, as it is often interpreted in
one’s own way. What is more, this inconsistency is often present in professional
sources. The well-known “Glossary of Meteorology” by the American Meteorology
Society suggests that climatic change is any systematic change in the long-term
run of climate elements sustained over several decades or longer (Glossary 2000).
Some sources explain that it is a transformation of the climatic system which lasts
the order of 1,000 years, and other insist that the changes may persist for a much
shorter time, but not as short as 5 to 11 years.
Recapitulating, although there is no ultimate explanation of the term, climate
changes are relatively long-lasting, for a few decades and sometimes hundreds of
101