What is the primary purpose of the Kyoto protocal?

Answer 1

In 1997, the problem of the rising of earth's average temperature was a strong enough political topic that eighty world leaders met in Kyoto, Japan, to agree upon a means of controlling that increase. The result was the Kyoto Protocol, which had no legal authority unless ratified by individual countries according to their constitutional processes. Countries that ratify agree to reduce their emissions of five greenhouse gases and CO2. The Protocol applies mostly to developed countries, with less stringent requirements being placed on nations with developing economies.

The Kyoto Protocol was signed in Kyoto, Japan on 1997.

All countries have now ratified the protocol, with the exception of the US, who now has a new President who supports the protocol.

Answer 2

This image is a comparison of 10 different published reconstructions of mean temperature changes during the last 2000 years. More recent reconstructions are plotted towards the front and in redder colors, older reconstructions appear towards the back and in bluer colors. An instrumental history of temperature is also shown in black. The medieval warm period and little ice age are labeled at roughly the times when they are historically believed to occur, though it is still disputed whether these were truly global or only regional events. The single, unsmoothed annual value for 2004 is also shown for comparison. (Image:Instrumental Temperature Record.pngshows how 2004 relates to other recent years).

For the purposes of this comparison, the author is agnostic as to which, if any, of the reconstructions of global mean temperature is an accurate reflection of temperature fluctuations during the last 2000 years. However, since this plot is a fair representation of the range of reconstructions appearing in the published scientific literature, it is likely that such reconstructions, accurate or not, will play a significant role in the ongoing discussions of global climate change and global warming.

For each reconstruction, the raw data has been decadally smoothed with a σ = 5 yr Gaussian weighted moving average. Also, each reconstruction was adjusted so that its mean matched the mean of the instrumental record during the period of overlap. The variance (i.e. the scale of fluctuations) was not adjusted (except in one case noted below).

Except as noted below, all original data for this comparison comes from [1] and links therein. It should also be noted that many reconstructions of past climate report substantial error bars, which are not represented on this figure.

ReconstructionsThe reconstructions used, in order from oldest to most recent publication are:

• (dark blue 1000-1991): P.D. Jones, K.R. Briffa, T.P. Barnett, and S.F.B. Tett (1998). , The Holocene, 8: 455-471.doi:10.1191/095968398667194956

• (blue 1000-1980): M.E. Mann, R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes (1999). , Geophysical Research Letters, 26(6): 759-762.

• (light blue 1000-1965): Crowley and Lowery (2000). , Ambio, 29: 51-54. Modified as published in Crowley (2000). , Science, 289: 270-277. doi:10.1126/science.289.5477.270

• (lightest blue 1402-1960): K.R. Briffa, T.J. Osborn, F.H. Schweingruber, I.C. Harris, P.D. Jones, S.G. Shiyatov, S.G. and E.A. Vaganov (2001). , J. Geophys. Res., 106: 2929-2941.

• (light green 831-1992): J. Esper, E.R. Cook, and F.H. Schweingruber (2002). , Science, 295(5563): 2250-2253.doi:10.1126/science.1066208.

• (yellow 200-1980): M.E. Mann and P.D. Jones (2003). , Geophysical Research Letters, 30(15): 1820.doi:10.1029/2003GL017814.

• (orange 200-1995): P.D. Jones and M.E. Mann (2004). , Reviews of Geophysics, 42: RG2002. doi:10.1029/2003RG000143

• (red-orange 1500-1980): S. Huang (2004). , Geophys. Res Lett., 31: L13205. doi:10.1029/2004GL019781

• (red 1-1979): A. Moberg, D.M. Sonechkin, K. Holmgren, N.M. Datsenko and W. Karlén (2005). , Nature, 443: 613-617.doi:10.1038/nature03265

• (dark red 1600-1990): J.H. Oerlemans (2005). , Science, 308: 675-677. doi:10.1126/science.1107046

• (black 1856-2004): Instrumental data was jointly compiled by the w:Climatic Research Unit and the UK Meteorological OfficeHadley Centre. Global Annual Average data set TaveGL2v [2] was used.

Answer 3

The reason for Kyoto protocol was to make countries accountable for the pollution they were creating. Essentially the protocol was created due to concerns over global warming which was being caused mostly by carbon dioxide.