Climate Change and Drying of Agricultural Products

Abstract

Global warming is affecting the world and will continue to affect humans and the ecosystem in the future, in different regions of the earth in diverse ways: air temperature rise, modifications in the precipitation and snow/ice melting rates, sea level rise, changes in geographical distribution, and even extinction of some plants and animals. In particular, the predictions presented in the 2007 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group 1 (available at www.ipcc.ch) for the mean temperature increase in the present century is about (3 ± 1)°C/century for a middle range scenario of human behavior. Mitigation measures need to be taken urgently in all aspects of activities in order to reduce the future impact of the temperature augmentation. In particular, the drying process (as well as the pre- and post-drying operations) needs to be reanalyzed, in order to try to participate in this world effort to reduce the impact of anthropogenic activities that introduce in the atmosphere an excess of greenhouse gases (GHG). The energy savings, use of renewable energies, optimization of each part of the drying process, and use of control devices for detecting and minimizing the atmospheric injection of GHG are some of a large number of possible actions to be taken in this respect. A nice example of how a planetary problem can be solved with the global participation of scientists, professionals, authorities and general public is the stopping of the destruction of the ozone layer and its possible recuperation in the near future, as discussed in the WMO related report (“Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2006”, that can be obtained at http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/arep/gaw/ozone2006/ozoneasstreport.html).^{[ 10 ]}

Keywords:

• Agricultural products
• Ambient temperature
• Climate change
• CO₂ Emission
• Drying
• Global warming

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

RDP thanks CONICET and ANPCYT/FONCYT Argentinean scientific organizations for partial support of the present work and Diego Sevilla for fruitful discussions. Thanks are also due to CYTED (Science and Technology for Development, a Latin America-Iberic Peninsula Scientific Program).

Notes

^a The data described are actually for the UK. For other countries the conversion coefficients must be reanalyzed in detail. The coefficient for diesel is 2.63 kg CO₂/L.

^b