What is Global Warming?
Global Warming or Climate change is a long-term change in the average temperature patterns that have come to shape Earth's local, regional and global atmospheric conditions.
How long has climate change affected the earth?
Changes have been detected since the pre-industrial period (between 1850 and 1900), which increases greenhouse gas levels in Earth's atmosphere, raising Earth's average surface temperature. Some natural processes have been overwhelmed by human activities, can also contribute to rise of Earth's average surface temperature. Since the pre-industrial era, human activity has increased Earth's global average temperature by around 1 Celsius or 1.8 Fahrenheit, which is currently increasing by more than 0.2 Celsius or 0.36 Fahrenheit per decade since the 1950s and is proceeding at an unrivaled rate over millennia.
How do Scientists predict climate change?
Scientists use computer simulations from the ground, air, and space, along with models, to monitor and research past, present, and future changes in Earth's atmosphere. Climate data records provide evidence of significant signs for climate change, such as increase in global land and ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, decrease in ice at Earth's north and south poles and in mountain glacial mass, frequency and dangerous changes in extreme weather such as hurricanes, heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods, and precipitation and cloud and vegetation cover changes.
How do we know Climate change is real?
Earth's climate has changed multiple times throughout Earth's history. The last 800,000 years, there have been 8 ice age cycles and warm periods, with the end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago indicating the start of the modern era and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are due to changes the amount of solar energy Earth receives and to very small variations in Earth's orbit.
Scientists attribute the global warming trend observed since the 1950s to the human expansion of the greenhouse effect, which is warming the Earth that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space.
Life depends on energy coming from the Sun, about half the light energy reaching Earth's surface passes through atmosphere to the surface, where it is absorbed in the form of infrared heat. About 90% of this heat is then absorbed by greenhouse gases and re-radiated, trapping heat inside Earth's atmosphere.
