chapter - Atmospheric and Oceanic Science

In view of the unavoidability of the climatic change during the twenty first
century, it is not only being considered the mitigation of the climatic change, but
the adaptation to it. The optimum adaptation would be one that could be planned in
advance and not the one occurring after changes appear. However, in many cases
this is still impossible given the lack of credible scenarios at regional scale.
Anyhow, the use of climate scenarios allows in certain cases to minimize the potential
risks without major costs. Especially it is always advisable the utilization of
options that in any case are good options in the current climate conditions (non
regret options).
The international concern about Climatic Change lead to the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climatic Change (UNFCCC) signed in 1992 in Rio de
Janeiro and within its system, to the Kyoto's Protocol in 1997. Both instruments
constitute the first steps towards a collective and progressive solution for the mitigation
of this serious problem. The Kyoto's Protocol compromises a modest reduction
of the developed countries' emission during the next year. However, these
reductions should be very much larger if what is intended is to stop or at least
reduce the speed of the global warming by the second half of the century.
The adaptation to the already unavoidable part of the climatic change is an
imperious need, but by no means, it should be understood as an alternative to the
process of mitigation, since if this process is not deepened, the outcome during the
second half of the century can be catastrophic.
References
Global climatic change
Barros, V. 2004: El Cambio Climático Global. Libros del Zorzal, Buenos Aires, 172 pp.
IPCC 2001a: Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Cambridge University Press, USA, 881 pp.
IPCC 2001b: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Cambridge University Press, USA, 1031 pp.
Mann, M. E., R. S. Bradley and M. K. Hughes 1999: Northern Hemisphere temperatures during
the past millennium: inferences, uncertainties and limitations, Geophys. Res. Lett, 26, pp.
759-762.
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