Scientists around the world are trying to learn more about how The increase in average temperatures around the world influences the climate. They say it is more and more likely that climate change is making weather events more intense, more frequent or longer lasting.
Is Rising temperatures in heat waves Y some add percentage of rainfall to heavy storms. You can also make weather events occur outside of the times or places where they normally happened in the past.
But what is causing climate change? Why are global temperatures rising? Y Is the hot weather to blame? for wild weather events? Here is some key information:
What does climate change mean?
Time is what you see outside the window. Climate is what happens in an area over years or decades. Climate change is the observed difference in long-term trends in air, water, and ocean temperatures and longer-term weather patterns..
Monitoring stations around the world add to a growing treasure trove of information that reveals how temperature and precipitation are changing. Some have decades of measurements, while others have over a century of data. In Japan, they have recorded the start of cherry blossom for more than 1,200 years.
Scientists use these historical records to study the increase in global average temperatures. For example, the logs show how the sap rises earlier in the maples either when wildfire seasons start earlier. They know that warmer temperatures slow ice formation on the Great Lakes, when warmer water temperatures feed more lake effect snow.
DEFINITIONS:Is climate change the same as global warming?
EFFECTS:How climate change disrupts our daily lives and fuels disasters.
What is the most important cause of climate change?
He major influence on the planet’s changing climate is the release of emissions into the atmosphere from burning oil, gas and coal to move people and goods from one place to another and to create energy, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Is that how it works:
- Carbon dioxide and other natural gases have always existed in the atmosphere, keeping the world warm just like a greenhouse keeps tropical plants alive in the winter. Scientists see that “greenhouse effect” in ice cores, sediments, and tree rings.
- Modern measurements show that CO2 emissions are increasing. Since 1958, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii has increased from 316 parts per million to 417 parts per million.
- Measured in such small amounts, the change may seem minuscule. However, because CO2 has increased by more than 30%, NASA and others say the changes are having a huge impact on global average temperatures.
- National and international studies document how excess carbon dioxide traps excess energy and it makes the planet warm up faster.
If CO2 doubles above the baseline of pre-industrial levels, the draft the latest National Climate Assessment It said global temperatures could rise by 4.5 to 7.2 degrees, triggering deadly heatwaves, crop damage and other cascading impacts around the world.
What are other causes of climate change?
- Manufacturing, mining and logging.
- The release of methane and nitrous oxide also contribute to the greenhouse effect.
- The El Niño Southern Oscillation, a pattern of changes in water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, can change weather patterns.
- Volcanic eruptions can produce carbon dioxide emissions that warm the Earth, but also aerosol particles that have a cooling effect.
How to stop climate change
So what can be done to avoid the dire consequences predicted if emissions and temperatures continue to rise?
Scientists at the United Nations and governments around the world say fossil fuel emissions must be cut sharply and soon to avoid “catastrophic consequences.” To keep the increase in global average temperatures to 2.7 degrees compared with temperatures at the end of the 19th century, the world must reach “net zero” CO2 emissions by 2050, according to the latest climate assessment.
The world cannot reduce all emissions, so achieving the result of net zero emissions requires removing carbon dioxide from the air through natural and mechanical means, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reported. That includes measures like guarding and protecting forests and wetlands that store carbon and developing technologies that can effectively absorb carbon from the air.
Other methods recommended by the UN and others include living a less carbon-intensive lifestyle and increasing the use of renewable energy resources.
Even if the world reaches net zero emissions, the national climate assessment states that it will be impossible to prevent some of the warming that is already underway.
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Dinah Voyles Pulver covers climate and environmental issues for USA TODAY. She can be reached at dpulver@gannett.com or @dinahvp on Twitter.
