Iran's Adaptation and Mitigation to climate change

1.) According to the second convention of the UNFCCC, Iran’s National Climate Change Office (NCCO) was established in January 1998 under the auspices
of the Department of the Environment. They stated a large amount of issues that they would have to adapt to. One example, is agriculture. Warming of planet will put Iran in a place of more droughts and less rain during the spring and fall seasons. One adaptation for this is increasing water management. They need to reduce the amount of water loss, utilize unconventional water resources, and intergrate water tecnologies into water resources. Another adaption mentioned is selection of the appropriate crop. Annual crops in dry lands are to be replaced with perennial crops, such as fruits, nuts and woody trees. Educating citizens about the changing climate and new issues with it is also really important part of this process.

2.) The IPCC adaption section states Asian countries should improvement agricultural infrastructure. They claim countries should prepare by improve pasture water supply, improve irrigation systems and their efficiency, improve use/store of rain and snow water, improve information exchange system on new technologies at national as well as regional and international level, and more. It is important for Iran itself to full-fill these obligations just because the country is already in desert like conditions. So water supplies are already scarce.

3.) On August 22th, 2005, Iran signed onto the  Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations. Iran was not required to reduce emissions but were encouraged to do so. There is no information weather they actually achieved reducing their emissions.

 4.) Iran has plans to mitigate climate change. Some examples from the UNFCCC include 30% emission reduction by 2025, increase the energy efficiency of end-use sectors (demand side) at the rate of 2% per year until 2025, increase of the share of renewable and low-carbon electricity production industries in total electricity generation of the country, and many more scenarios. They want to increase hydro power,  wind production, and funny enough nuclear production. For Iran to reach these goals, it is sated that they will need help from the international UNFCCC community. The government will also be doing some subsidies to help with the process. According to a popular science article, more people are concerned with climate change than people in the U.S. Iran has a 80% population concern while there is only a 70% concern in the United States. There is a disclaimer that it was a small population sampled, but still interesting to learn about.








5.) I personally believe that Iran should adapt to climate change. They have, geographically, high elevation throughout the country except near the Caspian Sea. So sea level rise wont impact them that much. They also already live in a desert region so water is already scarce most of the year. They should use technologies to make water distribution  and gathering water more effective.

Iran's Climate Change Impacts

1.) According to the Climate Change 2007 article, all of Asia should expect to see a warming trend in this century. It is likely central and western Asia will see a decrease in summer time precipitation. One direct quote to back this is, "With regard to precipitation, a key issue is related to the moisture transport from the northwest by westerlies and polar fronts. How far the projected drying of the neighboring Mediterranean penetrates into these regions is likely to be strongly dependent on accurate simulation of these moisture transport processes" (Region Climate Change Projections). The slowing uppar air stream will cause less moisture to be brought into the Asian region, especially Iran. Spring and fall should also see less precipitation and more dry spells. Winter, however, may see an increase in precipitation in the winter. Also, the country should expect a 2 ° C to 4 ° C  increase in temperature in the next century.

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-11-9.html

2.) The IPCC 2007 projects that most river basins in all of Asia will recede due to global warming. Coastal regions of Iran wil be in danger of flooding form increase in sea level rise. Figure 10.4 displays Iran's region, and it could see crop yields decrease up to 30% in 2050. Climate change will most likely cause water stress in the region. "Mortality due to diarrhoeal disease primarily associated with floods and droughts are expected to rise" (WGII summary for policy makers). 

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/figure-10-4.html

3.) Once again, according to the IPCC executive summary, we should expect to see a a decrease in precipitation and crop yield with an increase in famine and diseases. Increase in population and decrease in water supplies will lead to struggle over water and hunger issues. Other issues include coastal areas. "Sea-water intrusion due to sea-level rise and declining river runoff is likely to increase the habitat of brackish water fisheries but coastal inundation is likely to seriously affect the aquaculture industry and infrastructure particularly in heavily-populated megadeltas" (Executive Summary). On the coast of Iran, toxicity of cholera is likely to increase. 

4.) Some of the big issues for Iran is a decrease in water supply. Iran already gets no precipitation in the summer months for most of the country. Global warming will impact this situation even more so. According to google's global awareness project, "Iran's Lake Hamoun is fed primarily by water catchments in neighboring Afghanistan.When droughts occur in Afghanistan, or when water in watersheds that support Lake Hamoun are drawn down for other natural or human-induced reasons, the end result is a dry lakebed in Iran" (Global Awareness). This leads to fights over water supplies. River beds in this water scarce nation are already drying up, and ground water wont last forever. This will all contribute to increase in diseases because of the lack of nourishment and other factors. 

Iran's Contribution to Climate Change

CO2 emissions from Iran graph displays that liquid burning results in the most CO2 released at 70,000 metrics tons. Gases released in Iran are around 60,000 metric tons a year. One surprising result is that flaring use to be one of the greatest carbon emitters in Iran back in the 1970's but completely disappeared until the late 1990's and has a consistent amount released ever since. Iran started releasing significant amounts of CO2 back in the 1970's at 50,000 metric tons, but their greatest release was in 2010 at 150,000 metric tons.

Per Capita CO2 emission estimates for Iran show that average person uses 2.0 metric tons of carbon compared to the United States 4.9 metric tons of carbon. This means Iran uses 40% of the carbon compared to the United States per person. The value is lower since they release less carbon a year. Iran's rank on the Capita CO2 emissions is 48; compared to the United States rank of 12. I feel Iran's rank is correct because Iran has a large population but limited to its own oil reserves.

According to the total carbon emissions graph, Iran has a pretty insignificant carbon released compared to other countries. China has the most surprising results and has increased its carbon output by 10 fold since the 1990's. They are also the highest carbon emitters of 2008. However, since china has a larger population than the U.S. the states are at fault for polluting more per person. The total about of carbon sent into the atmosphere by each country is 91,229,888 metric tons for the United States, 31,793,558 metric tons for China, 9,151,461 metric tons for India, 5,364,817 metric tons for Italy, 80,124 metric tons for Kenya, 8,301,213 metric tons for France, and 2,816,123 metric tons for Iran. United States has the most metric tons of carbon sent into the atmosphere. 

China has only dumped 34% of the carbon that the United States has while India has only sent 10% of the carbon into the atmosphere the United States released. This shows while China and India are catching up to the United States in terms of metric tons of carbon, they still are no where close to what the United States has released overall. 

The keeling curve graph and the global emissions of carbon graph show many of the same features. They both show an increasing trend. The graphs are different because the keeling curve only shows carbon dioxide in parts per million while the other graph displays an arrange of trends including liquid carbon, solid carbon, gas carbon, and more. So the emissions of carbon shows carbons in different forms that is released every year.