Física y Cambio climático

Physics is the study of nature and its four compone nts: earth, air, water and fire. Earth refers to the soil and its organisms. The earth physics is the soil ph ysics with its physical processes affected by human activities and climate factors. The human activitie s and the climate change are controlling the soil p hysical degradation and diminishing the soil physical quali ty. Drought worsens land degradation and climate change exacerbates the different ways of drought. Water is the problem. Although soil is less than 1 m of depth, the volume of water retained in soils exceed s the volume of water in the rivers of the world. T he capacity of soil to retain water is quite important to satisfy plant water requirement, especially whe n rain trends to be more irregular and intermittent due to climate change. Soil physical properties and physi cal processes as precipitation and soil water flux are affected by the climate change. The soil is not an isolated body, but it interacts with atmosphere that contain s air , light and energy, the latter is precisely the fourth element of nature, fire . It is very important the interactions between soi l and the (change of) microclimate. Solar radiation that comes to the earth surface is partially reflexed and absorbed. The absorbed energ y is transferred to warm up soil and air and also used i n evapotranspiration. A fraction of the incoming so lar energy goes to photosynthesis, the most relevant na tural/biological/physical process, which is strongl y affected by climate change. The main cause of the gclimate change is the gas emission from fossi l fuels combustion that produces the called “greenhou se effect”. Plant, through photosynthesis, transfor ms solar energy into chemical energy absorbing CO 2 from air to fix it into biomass and releasing O 2.