DUSHANBE, December 27, Asia-Plus  -- A seminar on global warming problems was held in Dushanbe on December 26.  

Mr. I. Rajabov, head of the Center for Climate Change Studies at the Agency for Hydrometeorology, said that the event was dedicated to raise climate change awareness level among the public.  

The main objective of the seminar, which brought together representatives from NGOs dealing with ecological problems, students and media, was to discuss ways of joint cooperation to raise level of climate change awareness in the country.  

Participants in the seminar also heard the report on work carried out by the Agency for Hydrometeorology.  National consultants and representatives from NGOs gave papers at the seminar on the climate change problems.  

            According to Rajabov, over the past 80 years, an average air temperature in Tajikistan has risen 0.5 ° C in the mountain areas and more than 1 ° C in plains  

The climate model projections’ data show that further warming will threaten global ecological systems and cause ablation of glaciers and rise in the water level in oceans.

            “In Tajikistan, disappearance of small glaciers is to be observed,” said Rajabov, “Moreover, large glaciers, which occupy some 6%-8% of the country’s territory, are also descending.”  Thus, the glacier Garmo descended 7 kilometers from 1932 to 2005.      

            Ablation of glaciers may also lead to increase in frequency of cases of landslides and floods and in the future, decline in water flow in rivers.  

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s near-surface air and oceans in recent decades and it is projected continuation.   

The global average air temperature near the Earth''s surface rose 0.74 ± 0.18 ° C (1.33 ± 0.32 ° F ) during the 100 year period ending in 2005, which is higher than the earlier estimate of 0.6 ± 0.2 ° C for the period ending in 2000.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes "most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations” via the greenhouse effect.  Natural phenomena such as solar variation combined with volcanoes probably had a small warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950 and a small cooling effect from 1950 onward.  These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least 30 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.  While individual scientists have voiced disagreement with the conclusions of the IPCC, the overwhelming majority of scientists working on climate change are in agreement with them