Portal:Climate change

The Climate Change Portal

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Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. In a broader sense, climate change also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate. The modern-day rise in global temperatures is driven by human activities, especially fossil fuel (coal, oil and natural gas) burning since the Industrial Revolution. Fossil fuel use, deforestation, and some agricultural and industrial practices release greenhouse gases. These gases absorb some of the heat that the Earth radiates after it warms from sunlight, warming the lower atmosphere. Earth's atmosphere now has roughly 50% more carbon dioxide, the main gas driving global warming, than it did at the end of the pre-industrial era, reaching levels not seen for millions of years.

Climate change has an increasingly large impact on the environment. Heat waves and wildfires are becoming more common. Amplified warming in the Arctic has contributed to thawing permafrost, retreat of glaciers and sea ice decline. 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 minimize 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 increased flooding, extreme heat, increased food and water scarcity, more disease, and economic loss. Human migration and conflict can also be a result. The World Health Organization calls climate change one of the biggest threats to global health in the 21st century. Societies and ecosystems will experience more severe risks without action to limit warming. Adapting to climate change through efforts like flood control measures or drought-resistant crops partially reduces climate change risks, although some limits to adaptation have already been reached. Poorer communities are responsible for a small share of global emissions, yet have the least ability to adapt and are most vulnerable to climate change.

Many climate change impacts have been observed in the first decades of the 21st century, with 2024 the warmest on record at +1.60 °C (2.88 °F) since regular tracking began in 1850. Additional warming will increase these impacts and can trigger tipping points, such as melting all 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 2.8 °C (5.0 °F) by the end of the century.

There is widespread support for climate action worldwide, and most countries aim to stop emitting carbon dioxide. Fossil fuels can be phased out by ending their subsidies, conserving energy and switching to energy sources that do not produce significant carbon pollution. These energy sources include wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear power. Cleanly generated electricity can replace fossil fuels for powering transportation, heating buildings, and running industrial processes. Carbon can also be removed from the atmosphere, for instance by increasing forest cover and farming with methods that store carbon in soil. (Full article...)

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Climate change mitigation, also called decarbonisation, is an action to limit the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that cause climate change. Climate change mitigation actions include conserving energy and replacing fossil fuels with clean energy sources. Secondary mitigation strategies include changes to land use and removing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere. 2022 assessments emphasize that global greenhouse gas emissions must peak before 2025 and decline by about 43% by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5 °C, requiring rapid transitions in energy, transport, and land-use systems.

The adopted climate change mitigation policies are insufficient, as they contribute to some changes but fail to accelerate transitions at the scale and speed required, and would still result in global warming of about 2.7 °C by 2100, significantly above the 2015 Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming to below 2 °C.Recent research shows that demand-side climate solutions—such as shifts in transportation behavior, dietary change, improved building energy efficiency, and reduced material consumption—could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 40% to 70% by 2050 while improving human well-being.

Solar energy and wind power can replace fossil fuels at the lowest cost compared to other renewable energy options. The availability of sunshine and wind is variable and can require electrical grid upgrades, such as using long-distance electricity transmission to group a range of power sources. Energy storage can also be used to even out power output, and demand management can limit power use when power generation is low. Cleanly generated electricity can usually replace fossil fuels for powering transportation, heating buildings, and running industrial processes. Certain processes are more difficult to decarbonise, such as air travel and cement production. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) can be an option to reduce net emissions in these circumstances, although fossil fuel power plants with CCS technology is currently a high-cost climate change mitigation strategy. (Full article...)

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Credit: NASA

Orbital photograph of human deforestation in progress in the Tierras Bajas project in eastern Bolivia

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WikiProjects


WikiProject Climate change	WikiProject Environment	WikiProject Globalization

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Narain in 2009

Sunita Narain (born 1961) is an Indian environmentalist and political activist as well as a major proponent of the Green concept of sustainable development. Narain is director general of the India-based research institute for the Centre for Science and Environment, director of the Society for Environmental Communications, and editor of the fortnightly magazine, Down To Earth.

In 2016 Narain was named on Time Magazines list of 100 Most Influential People. She appeared alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in the documentary Before The Flood (2016), discussing the impact of climate change on the Monsoon in India and how it affects farmers. ('Full article...)

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General images

The following are images from various climate-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Exterior of a Stevenson screen used for temperature measurements on land stations. (from History of climate change science)
Image 2Mean 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)
Image 3Carbon dioxide observations from 2008 to 2017 showing the seasonal variations and the difference between northern and southern hemispheres (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 4Greenhouse gases allow sunlight to pass through the atmosphere, heating the planet, but then absorb and redirect the infrared radiation (heat) the planet emits. (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 5The Keeling Curve shows the long-term increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations since 1958. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 6Scientific 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)
Image 7Global 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)
Image 8CO₂ reduces the flux of thermal radiation emitted to space (causing the large dip near 667 cm⁻¹), thereby contributing to the greenhouse effect. (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 9The rising accumulation of energy in the oceanic, land, ice, and atmospheric components of Earth's climate system since 1960 (from Earth's energy budget)
Image 10James Croll (from History of climate change science)
Image 11CO₂ concentrations over the last 800,000 years as measured from ice cores (blue/green) and directly (black) (from Causes of climate change)
Image 12The US, China and Russia have cumulatively contributed the greatest amounts of CO₂ since 1850. (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 13Human fingerprints for global warming (summary of observational evidence that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing the climate to warm). (from Causes of climate change)
Image 14Between 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 the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 15Over 400,000 years of ice core data: Graph of CO₂ (green), reconstructed temperature (blue) and dust (red) from the Vostok ice core (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 16Eunice Newton Foote recognized carbon dioxide's heat-capturing effect in 1856, appreciating its implications for the planet. (from History of climate change science)
Image 17Energy flows between space, the atmosphere, and Earth's surface. Rising greenhouse gas levels are contributing to an energy imbalance. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 18This diagram of the 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 the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 19Anthropogenic global warming—not global cooling or "imminent ice ages"—dominated peer-reviewed literature in the 1970s, contrary to false claims that climate science subsequently reversed its consensus. (from History of climate change science)
Image 20Sea ice reflects 50% to 70% of incoming sunlight, while the ocean, being darker, reflects only 6%. As an area of sea ice melts and exposes more ocean, more heat is absorbed by the ocean, raising temperatures that melt still more ice. This is a positive feedback process. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 21A diagram which shows where the extra heat retained on Earth due to the energy imbalance is going.
Image 22Warming influence of atmospheric greenhouse gases has nearly doubled since 1979, with carbon dioxide and methane being the dominant drivers. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 23A 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)
Image 24The Fourth National Climate Assessment ("NCA4", USGCRP, 2017) includes charts illustrating that neither solar nor volcanic activity can explain the observed warming. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 25Schematic drawing of Earth's excess heat inventory and energy imbalance for two recent time periods (from Earth's energy budget)
Image 26Solar irradiance (yellow) plotted with temperature (red) since 1880. (from History of climate change science)
Image 27Extreme event attribution methods generally involve applying climate change models to scenarios in both the "real" world that is experiencing global warming, and a simulated world that does not suffer the drivers of global warming. Differences between the results of the two processes—especially the frequency, intensity and impacts of extreme weather events—are then analyzed to arrive at the attribution result. (from History of climate change science)
Image 28Erratics, 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)
Image 29Main sources of global methane emissions (2008–2017) according to the Global Carbon Project (from Causes of climate change)
Image 30Earth's energy budget (in W/m²) determines the climate. It is the balance of incoming and outgoing radiation and can be measured by satellites. The Earth's energy imbalance is the "net absorbed" energy amount. (from Earth's energy budget)
Image 31Observed temperature 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 Causes of climate change)
Image 32Earth's energy balance and imbalance, showing where the excess energy goes: Outgoing radiation is decreasing owing to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to Earth's energy imbalance of about 460 TW. The percentage going into each domain of the climate system is also indicated. (from Earth's energy budget)
Image 33Brown bars indicate drivers that increase global warming, and blue bars indicate those that decrease global warming. Future global warming potential for long lived drivers like carbon dioxide emissions is not represented. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 34Joseph Fourier (from History of climate change science)
Image 35Atmospheric CO₂ concentration measured at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii from 1958 to 2023 (also called the Keeling Curve). The rise in CO₂ over that time period is clearly visible. The concentration is expressed as μmole per mole, or ppm. (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 36Longwave-infrared absorption coefficients of water vapor and carbon dioxide. For wavelengths near 15-microns, CO₂ is a much stronger absorber than water vapor. (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 37Cumulative land-use change contributions to CO₂ emissions, by region. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 38Top 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 Causes of climate change)
Image 39CO₂ concentrations over the last 500 million years (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 40The 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)
Image 41Air-sea exchange of CO₂ (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 42Annual 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 the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 43Concentration 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 the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 44Earth heating estimates from a combination of space altimetry and space gravimetry (from Earth's energy budget)
Image 45Meat from cattle and sheep have the highest emissions intensity of any agricultural commodity. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 46John Tyndall's ratio spectrophotometer (drawing from 1861) measured how much infrared radiation was absorbed and emitted by various gases filling its central tube. Such measurements furthered understanding of the greenhouse effect that underlies global warming and climate change. (from History of climate change science)
Image 47CO₂ 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 Causes of climate change)
Image 48Since 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)
Image 49The impact of the greenhouse effect on climate was presented to the public early in the 20th century, as succinctly described in this 1912 Popular Mechanics article. (from History of climate change science)
Image 50Charles Keeling, receiving the National Medal of Science from George W. Bush, in 2001 (from History of climate change science)

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... that Mars' south polar ice cap may be melting due to global warming?

(Pictured left: Photo of Mars' south polar ice taken by Mars Global Surveyor.)

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Glacier retreat

Credit: U.S. Geological Survey – Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center (NOROCK) Authors: Myrna H. P. Hall and Daniel B. Fagre, 2003

Animation of Modeled Climate-Induced Glacier Change in Glacier National Park, 1850- 2100. The simulation reflects the predicted exponential rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations, a 2xCO₂ "global warming" scenario, with a concurrent warming of 2-3 degrees centigrade (4-5 degrees Fahrenheit) by the year 2050. In addition it assumes that precipitation, primarily in the form of rain, will increase over the same time period about 10 percent (based on the research of Dr. Steven Running, University of Montana).