Climate change

Article
Talk
Read
View source
View history

Tools
Appearance hide
Text

Small

Standard

Large
Width

Standard

Wide
Color

Automatic

Light

Dark
Featured article
Page semi-protected
Listen to this article
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the human-induced rise in global temperatures. For natural
historical climate trends, see Climate variability and change.
"Global warming" redirects here. For other uses, see Climate change
(disambiguation) and Global warming (disambiguation).
The global map shows sea temperature rises of 0.5 to 1 degree Celsius; land
temperature rises of 1 to 2 degrees Celsius; and Arctic temperature rises of up to
4 degrees Celsius.
Changes in surface air temperature over the past 50 years.[1] The Arctic has warmed
the most, and temperatures on land have generally increased more than sea surface
temperatures.
Timeseries of global warming from 1880 to 2020 compared to simulated temperatures
given only natural forcing. The first shows a positive trend since around 1950 and
the second stays relatively flat.
Earth's average surface air temperature has increased about 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) since
the Industrial Revolution. Natural forces cause some variability, but the
persistent temperature increase shows the progressive influence of human activity.
[2][3]
Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in
global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate
change in a broader sense 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.[4][5] Fossil fuel use, deforestation, and some agricultural and
industrial practices release greenhouse gases.[6] 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.[7]

Climate change has an increasingly large impact on the environment. Heat waves and
wildfires are becoming more common.[8] Amplified warming in the Arctic has
contributed to thawing permafrost, retreat of glaciers and sea ice decline.[9]
Higher temperatures are also causing more intense storms, droughts, and other
weather extremes.[10] Rapid environmental change in mountains, coral reefs, and the
Arctic is forcing many species to relocate or become extinct.[11] 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.[12]

Climate change threatens people with increased flooding, extreme heat, increased
food and water scarcity, more disease, and economic loss.[13] Human migration and
conflict can also be a result.[14] The World Health Organization calls climate
change one of the biggest threats to global health in the 21st century.[15]
Societies and ecosystems will experience more severe risks without action to limit
warming.[16] 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.[17] 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.[18][19]

Bobcat Fire in Monrovia, CA, September 10, 2020

Bleached colony of Acropora coral
A dry lakebed in California, which is experiencing its worst megadrought in 1,200
years.[20]
Examples of some effects of climate change: Wildfire intensified by heat and
drought, bleaching of corals occurring more often due to marine heatwaves, and
worsening droughts compromising water supplies.

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.[21][22] Additional warming will increase these impacts and
can trigger tipping points, such as melting all of the Greenland ice sheet.[23]
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.[24]

There is widespread support for climate action worldwide,[25][26] and most

countries aim to stop emitting carbon dioxide.[27] Fossil fuels can be phased out
by stopping subsidising them, conserving energy and switching to energy sources
that do not produce significant carbon pollution. These energy sources include
wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear power.[28] Cleanly generated electricity can
replace fossil fuels for powering transportation, heating buildings, and running
industrial processes.[29] Carbon can also be removed from the atmosphere, for
instance by increasing forest cover and farming with methods that store carbon in
soil.[30][31][32]

Terminology
Before the 1980s, it was unclear whether the warming effect of increased greenhouse
gases was stronger than the cooling effect of airborne particulates in air
pollution. Scientists used the term inadvertent climate modification to refer to
human impacts on the climate at this time.[33] In the 1980s, the terms global
warming and climate change became more common, often being used interchangeably.
[34][35][36] Scientifically, global warming refers only to increased global average
surface temperature, while climate change describes both global warming and its
effects on Earth's climate system, such as precipitation changes.[33]
Climate change can also be used more broadly to include changes to the climate that
have happened throughout Earth's history as result of natural processes.[37] The
term anthropogenic climate change is sometimes used to describe climate change
resulting from human activities.[38]

Global warming—used as early as 1975[39]—became the more popular term after NASA
climate scientist James Hansen used it in his 1988 testimony in the U.S. Senate.
[40] Since the 2000s, usage of climate change has increased.[41] Various
scientists, politicians and media may use the terms climate crisis or climate
emergency to talk about climate change, and may use the term global heating instead
of global warming.[42][43]

Global temperature rise

Further information: Global surface temperature
Temperatures prior to present-day global warming
Main articles: Climate variability and change; Temperature record of the last 2,000
years; and Paleoclimatology

Global surface temperature reconstruction over the past 2000 years using proxy data
from tree rings, corals, and ice cores in blue.[44] Directly observed data is in
red.[45]
Over the last few million years the climate cycled through ice ages. One of the
hotter periods was the Last Interglacial, around 125,000 years ago, where
temperatures were between 0.5 °C and 1.5 °C warmer than before the start of global
warming.[46] This period saw sea levels 5 to 10 metres higher than today. The most
recent glacial maximum 20,000 years ago was some 5–7 °C colder. This period has sea
levels that were over 125 metres (410 ft) lower than today.[47]

Temperatures stabilized in the current interglacial period beginning 11,700 years

ago.[48] This period also saw the start of agriculture.[49] Historical patterns of
warming and cooling, like the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, did not
occur at the same time across different regions. Temperatures may have reached as
high as those of the late 20th century in a limited set of regions.[50][51] Climate
information for that period comes from climate proxies, such as trees and ice
cores.[52][53]

Warming since the Industrial Revolution

In recent decades, new high temperature records have substantially outpaced new low
temperature records on a growing portion of Earth's surface.[54]

There has been an increase in ocean heat content during recent decades as the
oceans absorb over 90% of the heat from global warming.[55]
Around 1850 thermometer records began to provide global coverage.[56] Between the
18th century and 1970 there was little net warming, as the warming impact of
greenhouse gas emissions was offset by cooling from sulfur dioxide emissions.
Sulfur dioxide causes acid rain, but it also produces sulfate aerosols in the
atmosphere, which reflect sunlight and cause global dimming. After 1970, the
increasing accumulation of greenhouse gases and controls on sulfur pollution led to
a marked increase in temperature.[57][58]

Duration: 30 seconds.0:30
NASA animation portraying global surface temperature changes since 1880. The colour
blue denotes cooler temperatures and red denotes warmer temperatures. As reference
value the mean temperature from 1951 to 1980 is used.
Ongoing changes in climate have had no precedent for several thousand years.[59]
Multiple datasets all show worldwide increases in surface temperature, at a rate of
around 0.2 °C per decade.[60] The 2014–2023 decade warmed to an average 1.19 °C
[1.06–1.30 °C] compared to the pre-industrial baseline (1850–1900).[61] Not every
single year was warmer than the last: internal climate variability processes can
make any year 0.2 °C warmer or colder than the average.[62] From 1998 to 2013,
negative phases of two such processes, Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)[63] and
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO)[64] caused a short slower period of warming
called the "global warming hiatus".[65] After the "hiatus", the opposite occurred,
with 2024 well above the recent average at more than +1.5 °C.[66] This is why the
temperature change is defined in terms of a 20-year average, which reduces the
noise of hot and cold years and decadal climate patterns, and detects the long-term
signal.[67]: 5 [68]

A wide range of other observations reinforce the evidence of warming.[69][70] The

upper atmosphere is cooling, because greenhouse gases are trapping heat near the
Earth's surface, and so less heat is radiating into space.[71] Warming reduces
average snow cover and forces the retreat of glaciers. At the same time, warming
also causes greater evaporation from the oceans, leading to more atmospheric
humidity, and more and heavier precipitation.[72][73] Plants are flowering earlier
in spring, and thousands of animal species have been permanently moving to cooler
areas.[74]

Differences by region
Different regions of the world warm at different rates. The pattern is independent
of where greenhouse gases are emitted, because the gases persist long enough to
diffuse across the planet. Since the pre-industrial period, the average surface
temperature over land regions has increased almost twice as fast as the global
average surface temperature.[75] This is because oceans lose more heat by
evaporation and oceans can store a lot of heat.[76] The thermal energy in the
global climate system has grown with only brief pauses since at least 1970, and
over 90% of this extra energy has been stored in the ocean.[77][78] The rest has
heated the atmosphere, melted ice, and warmed the continents.[79]

The Northern Hemisphere and the North Pole have warmed much faster than the South
Pole and Southern Hemisphere. The Northern Hemisphere not only has much more land,
but also more seasonal snow cover and sea ice. As these surfaces flip from
reflecting a lot of light to being dark after the ice has melted, they start
absorbing more heat.[80] Local black carbon deposits on snow and ice also
contribute to Arctic warming.[81] Arctic surface temperatures are increasing
between three and four times faster than in the rest of the world.[82][83] Melting
of ice sheets near the poles weakens both the Atlantic and the Antarctic limb of
thermohaline circulation, which further changes the distribution of heat and
precipitation around the globe.[84][85][86][87]

Future global temperatures

CMIP6 multi-model projections of global surface temperature changes for the year
2090 relative to the 1850–1900 average. The current trajectory for warming by the
end of the century is roughly halfway between these two extremes.[24][88][89]
The World Meteorological Organization estimates there is almost a 50% chance of the
five-year average global temperature exceeding +1.5 °C between 2024 and 2028.[90]
The IPCC expects the 20-year average to exceed +1.5 °C in the early 2030s.[91]

The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (2021) included projections that by 2100 global
warming is very likely to reach 1.0–1.8 °C under a scenario with very low emissions
of greenhouse gases, 2.1–3.5 °C under an intermediate emissions scenario, or 3.3–
5.7 °C under a very high emissions scenario.[92] The warming will continue past
2100 in the intermediate and high emission scenarios,[93][94] with future
projections of global surface temperatures by year 2300 being similar to millions
of years ago.[95]