Portal:Climate change

The Climate Change Portal Average surface air temperatures from 2011 to 2020 compared to the 1951-1980 average. Source: NASA. In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate. The current rise in global average temperature is more rapid than previous changes, and is primarily caused by humans burning fossil fuels. Fossil fuel use, deforestation, and some agricultural and industrial practices increase greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide and methane. Greenhouse gases absorb some of the heat that the Earth radiates after it warms from sunlight. Larger amounts of these gases trap more heat in Earth's lower atmosphere, causing global warming. Due to climate change, deserts are expanding, while heat waves and wildfires are becoming more common. Increased warming in the Arctic has contributed to melting permafrost, glacial retreat and sea ice loss. Higher temperatures are also causing more intense storms, droughts, and other weather extremes. Rapid environmental change in mountains, coral reefs, and the Arctic is forcing many species to relocate or become extinct. Even if efforts to minimise future warming are successful, some effects will continue for centuries. These include ocean heating, ocean acidification and sea level rise. Climate change threatens people with food and water scarcity, increased flooding, extreme heat, more disease, and economic loss. Human migration and conflict can also be a result. The World Health Organization (WHO) calls climate change the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century. Communities may adapt to climate change through efforts like coastline protection or expanding access to air conditioning, but some impacts are unavoidable. Poorer countries are responsible for a small share of global emissions, yet they have the least ability to adapt and are most vulnerable to climate change. Many climate change impacts are already felt at the current 1.2 °C (2.2 °F) level of warming. Additional warming will increase these impacts and can trigger tipping points, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations collectively agreed to keep warming "well under 2 °C". However, with pledges made under the Agreement, global warming would still reach about 2.7 °C (4.9 °F) by the end of the century. Limiting warming to 1.5 °C will require halving emissions by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Reducing emissions requires generating electricity from low-carbon sources rather than burning fossil fuels. This change includes phasing out coal and natural gas fired power plants, vastly increasing use of wind, solar, and other types of renewable energy, and reducing energy use. Electricity generated from non-carbon-emitting sources will need to replace fossil fuels for powering transportation, heating buildings, and operating industrial facilities. Carbon can also be removed from the atmosphere, for instance by increasing forest cover and by farming with methods that capture carbon in soil. (Full article...) Selected article – Though some climate change deniers have stated that scientists disagree about whether the earth is warming, global warming datasets from multiple sources have pairwise correlations exceeding 98%. Climate change denial, or global warming denial, is denial, dismissal, or unwarranted doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change, including the extent to which it is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, or the potential of adaptation to global warming by human actions. Many who deny, dismiss, or hold unwarranted doubt about the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming self-label as "climate change skeptics", which several scientists have noted is an inaccurate description. Climate change denial can also be implicit when individuals or social groups accept the science but fail to come to terms with it or to translate their acceptance into action. Several social science studies have analyzed these positions as forms of denial or denialism, pseudoscience, or propaganda. The campaign to undermine public trust in climate science has been described as a "denial machine" organized by industrial, political and ideological interests, and supported by conservative media and skeptical bloggers to manufacture uncertainty about global warming. The politics of global warming have been affected by climate change denial and the political global warming controversy, undermining the efforts to act on climate change or adapting to the warming climate. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none. (Full article...) List of selected articles Climate engineering Scientific consensus on climate change Attribution of recent climate change Politics of global warming Regional effects of global warming Media coverage of global warming Climate change mitigation Sea level rise Effects of global warming Solar radiation management History of climate change science Carbon tax Kyoto Protocol Ozone depletion Climate crisis Air pollution Greenhouse effect Carbon offset Smog Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand Atmosphere of Earth Instrumental temperature record Climate change Greenhouse gas Arctic sea ice decline Runaway greenhouse effect Greenhouse and icehouse Earth Tipping points in the climate system Global temperature record Warming stripes Effects of global warming on human health Global warming controversy Public opinion on global warming Climate sensitivity Merchants of Doubt Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Paris Agreement 100,000-year problem Global Climate Coalition Quelccaya Ice Cap Sea surface temperature An Inconvenient Truth School Strike for Climate Selected picture – Credit: Jami Dwyer Jungle burned for agriculture in southern Mexico WikiProjects WikiProject Climate change WikiProject Environment WikiProject Globalization In the news From the Wikinews Climate change category Additional News Monsoons in India become more erratic. Climate modellers Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann win Nobel Prize. Selected biography – Xie in 2014 Xie Zhenhua (Chinese: 解振华; born November 1949) is a Chinese politician who served as vice-chairman of China's top economic development body, the National Development and Reform Commission as well as serving as China's special climate envoy. (Full article...) List of selected biographies Christiana Figueres Jyoti Kirit Parikh Sunita Narain Elizabeth Wathuti Penny Whetton Mercedes Bustamante Kathy Willis Adenike Oladosu Cynthia E. Rosenzweig Julia Slingo Gina McCarthy James Hansen Varun Sivaram Fatou Jeng Joseph Fourier Lavanya Rajamani Svante Arrhenius Sameh Shoukry Roger Revelle Mia Mottley Frans Timmermans David Wratt Kirsten Zickfeld Fatih Birol Katharine Hayhoe Hoesung Lee Marina Silva Patricia Espinosa Saleemul Huq Walter Munk Carol Browner General images The following are images from various climate-related articles on Wikipedia. Mean temperature anomalies during the period 1965 to 1975 with respect to the average temperatures from 1937 to 1946. This dataset was not available at the time. (from History of climate change science) The rising accumulation of energy in the oceanic, land, ice, and atmospheric components of Earth's climate system since 1960. (from Earth's energy budget) Global average temperatures show that the Medieval Warm Period was not a planet-wide phenomenon, and that the Little Ice Age was not a distinct planet-wide time period but rather the end of a long temperature decline that preceded recent global warming. (from Temperature record of the last 2,000 years) James Hansen during his 1988 testimony to Congress, which alerted the public to the dangers of global warming (from History of climate change science) In detection and attribution, natural factors include changes in the Sun's output and volcanic eruptions, as well as natural modes of variability such as El Niño and La Niña. Human factors include the emissions of heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases and particulates as well as clearing of forests and other land-use changes. Figure source: NOAA NCDC. (from Attribution of recent climate change) A Sankey diagram illustrating a balanced example of Earth's energy budget. Line thickness is linearly proportional to relative amount of energy. (from Earth's energy budget) CO2 concentrations over the last 500 Million years (from Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere) Graph of CO2 (green), reconstructed temperature (blue) and dust (red) from the Vostok ice core for the past 420,000 years (from Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere) Earth's climate is largely determined by the planet's energy budget, i.e., the balance of incoming and outgoing radiation. It is measured by satellites and shown in W/m2. The imbalance (or rate of global heating; shown in figure as the "net absorbed" amount) grew from +0.6 W/m2 (2009 est.) to above +1.0 W/m2 in 2019. (from Earth's energy budget) Observed temperature from NASA vs the 1850–1900 average used by the IPCC as a pre-industrial baseline. The primary driver for increased global temperatures in the industrial era is human activity, with natural forces adding variability. (from Attribution of recent climate change) CO2 sources and sinks since 1880. While there is little debate that excess carbon dioxide in the industrial era has mostly come from burning fossil fuels, the future strength of land and ocean carbon sinks is an area of study. (from Attribution of recent climate change) The growth in Earth's energy imbalance from satellite and in situ measurements (2005–2019). A rate of +1.0 W/m2 summed over the planet's surface equates to a continuous heat uptake of about 500 terawatts (~0.3% of the incident solar radiation). (from Earth's energy budget) Between 1850 and 2019 the Global Carbon Project estimates that about 2/3rds of excess carbon dioxide emissions have been caused by burning fossil fuels, and a little less than half of that has stayed in the atmosphere. (from Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere) Charles Keeling, receiving the National Medal of Science from George W. Bush, in 2001 (from History of climate change science) Annual CO2 flows from anthropogenic sources (left) into Earth's atmosphere, land, and ocean sinks (right) since year 1960. Units in equivalent gigatonnes carbon per year. (from Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere) The greenhouse effect traps infrared heat, and ultimately raises Earth's surface temperatures. (from Earth's energy budget) John Tyndall's ratio spectrophotometer (drawing from 1861) measured how much infrared radiation was absorbed and emitted by various gases filling its central tube. (from History of climate change science) Scientific consensus on causation: Academic studies of scientific agreement on human-caused global warming among climate experts (2010–2015) reflect that the level of consensus correlates with expertise in climate science. A 2019 study found scientific consensus to be at 100%, and a 2021 study concluded that consensus exceeded 99%. Another 2021 study found that 98.7% of climate experts indicated that the Earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity. (from History of climate change science) Since the 1980s, global average surface temperatures during a given decade have almost always been higher than the average temperature in the preceding decade. (from History of climate change science) Energy flows between space, the atmosphere, and Earth's surface. Rising greenhouse gas levels are contributing to an energy imbalance of about +0.9 W/m2. (from Attribution of recent climate change) Air-sea exchange of CO2 (from Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere) Radiative forcing drivers of climate change in year 2011, relative to pre-industrial (1750). (from Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere) Carbon dioxide observations from 2005 to 2014 showing the seasonal variations and the difference between northern and southern hemispheres (from Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere) Erratics, boulders deposited by glaciers far from any existing glaciers, led geologists to the conclusion that climate had changed in the past. (from History of climate change science) Modeled simulation of the effect of various factors (including GHGs, Solar irradiance) singly and in combination, showing in particular that solar activity produces a small and nearly uniform warming, unlike what is observed. (from Attribution of recent climate change) The US, China and Russia have cumulatively contributed the greatest amounts of CO2 since 1850. (from Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere) Joseph Fourier (from History of climate change science) Atmospheric CO2 concentrations measured at Mauna Loa Observatory from 1958 to 2022 (also called the Keeling Curve). Carbon dioxide concentrations have varied widely over the Earth's 4.54 billion year history. However, in 2013 the daily mean concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere surpassed 400 parts per million (ppmv) - this level has never been reached since the mid-Pliocene, 2 to 4 million years ago. (from Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere) The Keeling Curve shows the long-term increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations from 1958–2018. Monthly CO2 measurements display seasonal oscillations in an upward trend. Each year's maximum occurs during the Northern Hemisphere's late spring. (from Attribution of recent climate change) The rate of global tree cover loss has approximately doubled since 2001, to an annual loss approaching an area the size of Italy. (from Attribution of recent climate change) Contribution to climate change broken down by economic sectors, according to the IPCC AR5 report. (from Attribution of recent climate change) Probability density function (PDF) of fraction of surface temperature trends since 1950 attributable to human activity, based on IPCC AR5 10.5 (from Attribution of recent climate change) Schematic drawing of Earth's excess heat inventory as it relates to the planet's energy imbalance for two recent time periods. (from Earth's energy budget) Correspondence between temperature and atmospheric CO2 during the last 800,000 years (from Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere) This image shows three examples of internal climate variability measured between 1950 and 2012: the El Niño–Southern oscillation, the Arctic oscillation, and the North Atlantic oscillation. (from Attribution of recent climate change) James Croll (from History of climate change science) Scientific consensus on causation: Academic studies of scientific agreement on human-caused global warming among climate experts (2010–2015) reflect that the level of consensus correlates with expertise in climate science. A 2019 study found scientific consensus to be at 100%, and a 2021 study concluded that consensus exceeded 99%. Another 2021 study found that 98.7% of climate experts indicated that the Earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity. (from Attribution of recent climate change) Concentration of atmospheric CO2 over the last 40,000 years, from the Last Glacial Maximum to the present day. The current rate of increase is much higher than at any point during the last deglaciation. (from Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere) Frequency of occurrence (vertical axis) of local June–July–August temperature anomalies (relative to 1951–1980 mean) for Northern Hemisphere land in units of local standard deviation (horizontal axis). According to Hansen et al. (2012), the distribution of anomalies has shifted to the right as a consequence of global warming, meaning that unusually hot summers have become more common. This is analogous to the rolling of a dice: cool summers now cover only half of one side of a six-sided die, white covers one side, red covers four sides, and an extremely hot (red-brown) anomaly covers half of one side. (from Attribution of recent climate change) Top panel: Observed global average temperature change (1870— ). Bottom panel: Data from the Fourth National Climate Assessment is merged for display on the same scale to emphasize relative strengths of forces affecting temperature change. Human-caused forces have increasingly dominated. (from Attribution of recent climate change) This diagram of the fast carbon cycle shows the movement of carbon between land, atmosphere, and oceans in billions of metric tons of carbon per year. Yellow numbers are natural fluxes, red are human contributions, white are stored carbon. (from Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere) Greenhouse gases allow sunlight to pass through the atmosphere, heating the planet, but then absorb and re-radiate the infrared radiation (heat) the planet emits (from Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere) Cumulative land-use change contributions to emissions, by region. (from Attribution of recent climate change) Photosynthesis changes sunlight into chemical energy, splits water to liberate O2, and fixes CO2 into sugar. (from Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere) Milutin Milanković (from History of climate change science) Solar irradiance (yellow) plotted with temperature (red) since 1880. (from Attribution of recent climate change) Did you know – Related portals Selected panorama – Sea level Credit: NOAA Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry Sea level trends between 1993 and 2010. Per the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), "The following maps provide estimates of sea level rise based on measurements from satellite radar altimeters. The local trends were estimated using data from TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P), Jason-1, and Jason-2, which have monitored the same ground track since 1992. An inverted barometer has been applied. The estimates of sea level rise do not include glacial isostatic adjustment effects on the geoid, which are modeled to be +0.2 to +0.5 mm/year when globally averaged." Topics Air pollution Rapid climate change Glossary of climate change Greenhouse effect Greenhouse gases History of climate change science Human impact on the environment Index of climate change articles List of renewable energy topics by country Renewable energy commercialization Categories Climate change Climate change by country and region Climate change-related lists Climate change assessment and attribution Climate change and the environment Climate change feedbacks Greenhouse gases Climate change litigation Climate change mitigation Climate change and society Climate change stubs Web resources Research NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies  – Global change research NOAA State of the Climate Report  – U.S. and global monthly state of the climate reports Climate Change at the National Academies — repository for reports Nature Reports Climate Change — free-access web resource Met Office: Climate change — UK National Weather Service Educational What Is Global Warming? — by National Geographic Global Climate Change Indicators  – from NOAA NOAA Climate Services  – from NOAA Global Warming Frequently Asked Questions — from NOAA Global climate change — from BBC Bitesize(help with school exam revision) Things to do Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Expand : Add {{portal|Climate change}} to related articles Split : Pipeline transport Stubs : Category:Climate change stubs • Total equivalent warming impact Update : 2023 in the environment and environmental sciences • Coral bleaching • Long-term effects of global warming Verify : Climate change in Massachusetts • Effects of global warming on Australia • Extreme Ice Survey • Glacier mass balance • Global-warming potential • World Wide Views on Global Warming (organization)  – When a task is completed, please remove it from the list. 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