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BIOLOGY INVESTIGATION PROJECT

TOPIC: CLIMATE CHANGE

NAME: TAAWA
SURNAME: BIRIRAKE
FORM: SIX SCIENCE
TEACHER: ADRIAN MERAKE
SCHOOL: ST FRANCIS HIGH SCHOOL
DUE DATE: 27/08/16
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Topic:

Climate Change

Question:

Is the rises of the average temperature causes sea level rises and
unnormal weather pattern - rainfall

Aim:

 To find out what is global warming, its effect, what causes it and
what solutions to stop or reduce global warming.

 Is sea level rises occurred in Kiritimati Island

 To investigate does the average rainfall of Kiritimati Island rises.

Hypothesis

Is that the average rainfall of Kiritimati Island is increasing at 30 mm

annualy

Methodology:

 Research on the earth science books at the library.

 Collected more information from it.
 Choose the best ideas that focus on my topic.
 Interviewed geography teachers.
 Conducting a brief experiment\survey on temperature rises in
Kiritimati and weather pattern-rainfall
Research at collecting data on rainfall in Kiritimati Island
Kiribati Meteorological Service, Cassidy Airport
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Introduction:

Kiritimati Island is one of the largest atolls but it is a low island and now
experiences many bad changes in weather pattern and the seal level
rises, and many more which have bad influence to our community and
especially our beautiful, peacefully and harmony environment. Today
the native of the island raised questions to their worries such as what
causes the sea level rises, and the washing away of coastal erosion and
the rises in the temperature of the land and water surface and the
increasing of rainfall. As mentioned before the aim of this project is to
probe on the above environmental issues concerning Kiritimati Island,
particularly on global warming which is the main factor of weather
pattern changes observed in Kiritimati Island. Global warming means
the increases in temperature of the earths atmosphere that is caused by
the increases of a particular gases especially co2 (see also greenhouse
effect).The greenhouse effect describes a process of global warming
caused by the green house gases. The greenhouse effect is caused by the
greenhouse gases which it as an ozone layer in the atmosphere, letting
in sunlight but trapping the heat that would normally back into space.
“The atmosphere cools and warms by turning the earths and the
living creatures that inhabit it. It draws up vapor from the sea and
land, retain them dissolved in itself or suspended in cisterns of
clouds, and draws them down again as rain or dew when they are
required it affords the gas which vivifies and warms our frame and
receives it into itself that which has been polluted by use and thrown
as noxious” P Michael (1995).On the other hand, there are so many
causes of the global warming and how global warming increase by using
gases and carbon dioxide and finally green house, and that will be
explained later in this project.
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Results: (source: Kiritimati Island Meteorological Service)

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Discussion

 Background Information

What is Global Warming?

Global warming defined as the increases in temperature of the earth’s

atmosphere that is caused by the increases of a particular gases
especially co2 (P Michael, 1995). Global warming is now known as one
of the major natural disasters the Earth has ever experience. Books and
texts defined global warming as the rises in temperature of the earth’s
atmosphere but I argued that Global warming is the warm up of the
Earth in particular year.

What causes Global Warming?

Global warming is initiated by mankind works and cleverness. I believed

that from the time God created Earth, everything goes well and fine, but
as centuries pass by there are new events and disasters come to implant
on the Earth atmosphere. Researches has been carried out and argued
that the main cause of Global warming is by the cleverness and changes
of human way of living. However the main factors that causes global
warming are: Greenhouse effect, which is causes by building of
factories, deforestation, burning of fossil fuels, farming and waste
breakdown.

Effect of Global Warming

It is obvious shown that the increasing of greenhouses gases in the

atmosphere would breaks the ozone layer allowing sun’s rays and heat
penetrate freely into the atmosphere initiating the rises of temperature
in the Earth atmosphere (Global warming). Therefore the ice mass of
the north and South Pole, as well as glaciers will eventually melt
producing more volume of water added to the ocean causes the sea level
rises and flood. Global warming actually cause the rising of land and
ocean temperature, ocean current change (coastal erosion could
possibly happened), and finally weather patterns change such as
rainfall.
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The annual rainfall pattern in Kiritimati Island. (Source: Kiritimati

Meteorological Service)
Details of the climate and rainfall of Kiritimati are presented in Porteous
and Thompson (1996) and Falkland and White (2008b). A summary of
the main features are provided below including an analysis of available
rainfall data between 1951 and 2013.
Daily rainfall and other climatic data has been collected at London
(January 1951 to June 1997) and at Cassidy (or Casady) Airport (July
1997 to the present with 16 months of missing data in the period 2009 -
2011). Earlier daily rainfall data is available from London for most of
the period from January 1921 to December 1941. Official records are
held by the Kiribati Meteorological Service (KMS) at their main office in
Betio, Tarawa.
Additional rainfall data has been collected over shorter periods at a
number of other sites. Falkland (1983) outlines daily rainfall monitoring
sites prior to 1983 which include Main Camp, Banana, Poland, South
East Point and Manulu Lagoon. Known current additional rainfall
gauges are an automatic raingauge at a private house in Port Camp,
London (monthly records are available for several years) and an
automatic raingauge at a radionuclide monitoring station at the eastern
end of Main Camp (commissioned in 2007 by the Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization).
A summary of the main climate and rainfall features for Kiritimati is
provided below:

Kiritimati is located within the equatorial dry zone of the Pacific Ocean
and its climate is dominated by long drought periods associated with La
Niña periods and high rainfall periods associated with El Niño events.

The pattern of annual rainfall for the period 1951 – 2013 is shown in
Figure 3. For this period, the average (mean) annual rainfall is about
960 mm and the coefficient of variation, Cv (an indicator of variability)
is 0.72, which is very high. Unfortunately, annual data is not available
for the years 2009-2011 due to the 16 months of missing data in this
period.
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The maximum and minimum annual rainfalls (based on calendar years,

January – December) are 3,686 mm (in 1987) and 177 mm (in 1954).
The maximum and minimum 12-month rainfalls are even more extreme
with 4,314 mm between April 1997 and March 1998 and only 109 mm
between June 1984 to May 1985:

The average annual rainfall is lower and more variable than on other
populated Pacific Island countries. Most other Pacific Island countries
have average annual rainfalls between 1,500 mm and 3,000 mm and
Cv’s of annual rainfall between 0.15 and 0.25. In Kiribati, Tarawa has an
average annual rainfall of about 2,000 mm (about average for the Pacific
islands) and an annual Cv of 0.47 (high for the Pacific islands). It is
therefore evident that Kiritimati has an extremely variable rainfall
pattern.

Average annual rainfall has increased in Kiritimati since the 1950s but
the rainfall has become more variable. Figure 4 shows an increasing
trend in annual rainfall from 1951 to 2013 with an average annual
increase of about 7.6 mm.

From an analysis of the historical rainfall record, droughts have become

less intense, of shorter duration and with a longer period between them.
Whether this change is part of a longer term oscillation in climate
cannot be determined from the relatively short rainfall record.

Monthly rainfall is highly variable (refer Figure 5) with a maximum of

983 mm in April 1984 and many months with zero rainfall. Every
calendar month has had at least one occurrence of zero rainfall except
for April and May (minima of 4 mm and 1 mm, respectively). The
minimum 2, 3 and 6 month rainfalls are zero, 0.1 mm and 5.3 mm. Cv’s
of monthly rainfall vary from 0.9 in April to 2.8 in October. These are
very high compared with other Pacific islands.

The monthly rainfall over the three months prior to and including the
February visit was very low (0.7 mm in December 2013, 0.5 mm in
January 2014 and 1.6 mm in February 2014). The cumulative rainfall in
this 3-month period was the lowest since the second half of 1998.
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How to prevent these problems

In my own opinion this is the way to reduce the increasing of global

warming.

 Stop the deforestation in the forest or anywhere.

 Stop the burning of fossil fuel, coal, and so forth.
 Industry should decrease the production of CFCs, methane and so
forth.
 Plant more trees in unoccupied areas.
 Factories that manufacturing cars should find ways to reduce the
releasing of carbon monoxide or nitrous oxide from exhausts.
 Ignore family planning

Image 1: view from bus shows the bond of rainwater; producing from the rises of rainfall this
year. This had never happened from previous years that rainwater is blocking the main road.
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Discussion:

After this research it obviously stated that the increase of the

atmosphere temperature is called “Global warming”. Global warming is
caused by the green houses’ gases such as methane, carbon dioxide,
CFCs and nitrous oxide when gathered around the Ozone layer breaking
it and creating holes which then allows the sun heat and radiation pass
through freely into the atmosphere of the Earth. Carbon dioxide
(greenhouse gases) fastened global warming, if the carbon dioxide is
over the atmosphere, then it would destroy the ozone layer or the
thermal blanket. If it is damaged then it would make the Earth’s
temperature rise causing the north and south poles to become melt and
it can cause the sea level rise, changes in weather pattern, flooding and
so forth.

Image 1: the sea water overflows to the main road, London

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Never the less, I do believe that the declining of human population has
also little contribution to the creation of Global warming but considered
as a minor factor if the global population undergo a decline pattern.

It is true that these problems we are constantly facing today: The sea
level rises; not only that but the weather pattern is also changes such as
rainfall is increasing in Kiritimati Island. It has mentioned that global
warming causes changes in the weather pattern and we believed it
because we have experienced natural disasters frequently. For example,
Tsunami at Japan (occur at the beginning of this year) and at Samoa
(2009), hurricane and cyclone was experienced in Fiji at previous years,
and flooding in other countries such as Monsoon Asia and many more.
However the weather pattern in Kiritimati Island is eventually changing.
From the result we can determine now that average rainfall is rising in
which can cause flood on the Island later in the following generations.

Children are walking on a wet road causes by sea level rises – Kiritimati Island
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After my findings and the result shown at the previous pages I noticed
that the annual average rainfall now was getting increase from year to
year and the graph also shows that the weather pattern is fluctuated.
This could possible happened because there are so many human
activities that do to our environment or (world) for example more a
thousands of people or company use the deforestation and there is no
replanting after the using this process. Not only, but they use a bug of
industry and producing more CFCs, methane, nitrous oxide and so forth,
from this problems it can altered and lost our life and the main is our
world disappeared.

Conclusion:

To conclude, this whole project now shows clearly that global warming
is the rising of global temperature. Global warming is caused by
greenhouse gases. The effect of global warming has bad influences to
our environment for the following examples; the rises in temperature,
cyclone and hurricane, rising of rainfall, flood, coastal erosion and sea
level rises. Kiritimati Island is a low island and now experiencing the
effect of sea level rises such as the washing away of soil and
sands\beaches in coastal areas. Everyone is responsible and let all hand
in hand to stop it before it is too late.

Bibliography:

A. Ale B, Geography teacher, 2016 per. Com.

B. J.Boutaake, Geography teacher, 2016, per. Com.

C. P Michael.1995, Earth science, university of Georgia, Athena

D. www.science.org.au/nova/016/016key.htm