Could 0.45 degrees Celsius disturb the thermal equilibrium of the Earth?

The average annual temperature on the planet Earth is +14.2 degrees Celsius. However, in recent years, environmentalists are sounding the alarm: 2002-2012 passed under the sign of the hottest decade for the entire period of systematic observations. Particularly alarmed scientists 2012, which in terms of temperature indicators hit the top-ten of the hottest years. However, for sure many will be amazed, Europe has remembered the winter (January-February) 2012 as a record cold. This is because the temperature and thermal equilibrium are not the same. The indicator of the average temperature of the planet can be compared with the average temperature of patients in the hospital - including both those who lie in the fever, and those who lie in the morgue. It will be 36.6 in the hospital, but the sick from this is not easier.

The record low winter temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere have overcame an unusually hot summer. Scientists recorded last year the "Arctic minimum" - the smallest amount of ice cover in the Arctic for a certain time of the year. The ice of Greenland began to melt faster by a factor of five compared to the period when scientists 20 years ago began to speak with dismay about it. Cases of the death of polar bears have become more frequent, the habitat of which is reduced due to the melting of the glacial cap of the North Pole. All this generates the most gloomy forecasts: the balance of the system is broken, irreversible processes have started, in 20 years the Arctic Ocean will be completely free of ice in the summer, and our grandchildren will be able to sail to the North Pole on the ship even in winter.

The importance of the Arctic on a planetary scale is difficult to overestimate. At the North Pole there is no continent (like Antarctica in the South), which due to the continental climate accumulates enough ice in winter to keep it in the summer. Therefore, the ice cap of the Arctic used to serve as a "refrigerator" for the Northern Hemisphere. It maintained a thermal equilibrium, distributing the air currents so that the climate would soften in the summer. However, now, due to the reduction in the number of ice, the Arctic has ceased to perform its functions. This "failure in the system" affected, above all, on the already droughty regions of the tropics, but also in other parts of the world.

The disturbed thermal equilibrium reduced the area of territories previously covered by permafrost. Methane, previously "bound" in the bowels, is released, penetrates into the atmosphere and only enhances the greenhouse effect generated by human economic activity. Large-scale melting of ice has led to the fact that the water level in the world's oceans has risen by 1 centimeter and 11 millimeters in comparison with 1992. In addition to the threat of flooding of lowland areas, this entails desalination of the oceans, and, consequently, the death of some species of plankton, invertebrates, fish and so on along the food chain. Thus, a vicious circle is obtained: the heating of the atmosphere results by heat exchange and circulation of air and water to an even greater warming.

Ecological disaster, which led to a disturbed thermal equilibrium, was called by meteorologists "El Niño" (from the Spanish - the child). The weather in the last decade has really become "naughty" as a capricious kid: it's snow in Jerusalem, then the heat is under 40 in Moscow. Temperature maxima are encountered more and more often. They generate powerful typhoons and hurricanes.

Should we talk about the looming Apocalypse? In this issue, the opinions of scientists differ. Along with the pessimistic forecasts predicting the flooding of the Netherlands and the global ecological catastrophe, there are also quite confident voices that nothing terrible is happening, and the impact of the human factor on the planet's climate is somewhat exaggerated. Earlier in the history of our mother Earth, there have been periods when the thermal equilibrium was violated. There were times when the North Pole was not covered with snow at all, and there were such times (they were found by the Cro-Magnon man) when a giant glacier covered half of Europe, and in modern Spain there was a tundra. A short period of global warming was observed at the end of the Xth and up to the XII century, and the XIV century was characterized in the history of Europe as a century of global cooling.