Track: Undergraduate Student Paper Competition

Abstract

Climate change is one of the most important issues confronting the globe today. The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is increasing at an alarming rate as a result of human activities. Whale can play an important role to fight against this global disaster.  Because their bodies are massive carbon sinks, and their presence in the ocean has an impact on the ecosystems. Scientists discovered in a 2010 study that before industrial whaling, whale populations would have sunk between 190,000 and 1.9 million tons of carbon per year to the bottom of the ocean. Even their iron-rich feces provide ideal conditions for phytoplankton growth. Although phytoplankton are minuscule, they have a significant impact on the atmosphere collecting an estimated 40% of all carbon dioxide created, which is four times the amount caught by the Amazon rainforest. When humans hunt whales that provide significant resources, but this has a huge negative effect on atmosphere as they carry a substantial amount of carbon and because of hunting carbon dioxide returns to the atmosphere which is also a fact of global warming. In this study, we have proposed a non-linear mathematical model to describe the effect of industrial whaling on atmosphere. The models have been analyzed analytically to test the validity and then the analytical results have been verified with the numerical simulations. Our findings show the importance of whale in controlling global warming by reducing carbon dioxide from atmosphere.