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Climate Change: Causes, Effects, and Solutions
- Categories: Climate Change
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Published: Jan 29, 2024
Words: 663 | Page: 1 | 4 min read
Table of contents
Introduction, causes of climate change, effects of climate change, efforts to combat climate change, challenges and future outlook.
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). " Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis." IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, 2021. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/
- United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). "The Paris Agreement." UNFCCC, 2015. https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement
- United Nations. "Sustainable Development Goals." United Nations, https://sdgs.un.org/goals
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Search the United Nations
- What Is Climate Change
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- Sustainable Development Goals
- Paris Agreement
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Causes and Effects of Climate Change
Fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – are by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for over 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions. As greenhouse gas emissions blanket the Earth, they trap the sun’s heat. This leads to global warming and climate change. The world is now warming faster than at any point in recorded history. Warmer temperatures over time are changing weather patterns and disrupting the usual balance of nature. This poses many risks to human beings and all other forms of life on Earth.
All About the NDCs
Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, are national climate action plans by each country under the Paris Agreement . A country's NDC outlines how it plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to help meet the global goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5C and adapt to the impacts of climate change. The Paris Agreement requires that NDCs are updated every five years with increasingly higher ambition, taking into consideration each country’s capacity.
Time to rethink ‘outdated and ineffective’ international financial architecture
Some of the world’s poorest countries spend more on debt repayments than on health, education and infrastructure combined, severely hampering their chances of developing their economies. At the Summit of the Future, reducing inequality and improving people’s lives by overhauling the entire international financial system will be high on the agenda.
Aligning AI and climate governance
Can AI governance be harnessed to combat climate change? Read about emerging global policies and their potential for climate action in this piece by the United Nations University.
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The Causes of Climate Change
Human activities are driving the global warming trend observed since the mid-20th century.
- The greenhouse effect is essential to life on Earth, but human-made emissions in the atmosphere are trapping and slowing heat loss to space.
- Five key greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, and water vapor.
- While the Sun has played a role in past climate changes, the evidence shows the current warming cannot be explained by the Sun.
Increasing Greenhouses Gases Are Warming the Planet
Scientists attribute the global warming trend observed since the mid-20 th century to the human expansion of the "greenhouse effect" 1 — warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space.
Life on Earth depends on energy coming from the Sun. About half the light energy reaching Earth's atmosphere passes through the air and clouds to the surface, where it is absorbed and radiated in the form of infrared heat. About 90% of this heat is then absorbed by greenhouse gases and re-radiated, slowing heat loss to space.
Four Major Gases That Contribute to the Greenhouse Effect
Carbon dioxide.
A vital component of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is released through natural processes (like volcanic eruptions) and through human activities, such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation.
Like many atmospheric gases, methane comes from both natural and human-caused sources. Methane comes from plant-matter breakdown in wetlands and is also released from landfills and rice farming. Livestock animals emit methane from their digestion and manure. Leaks from fossil fuel production and transportation are another major source of methane, and natural gas is 70% to 90% methane.
Nitrous Oxide
A potent greenhouse gas produced by farming practices, nitrous oxide is released during commercial and organic fertilizer production and use. Nitrous oxide also comes from burning fossil fuels and burning vegetation and has increased by 18% in the last 100 years.
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
These chemical compounds do not exist in nature – they are entirely of industrial origin. They were used as refrigerants, solvents (a substance that dissolves others), and spray can propellants.
FORCING: Something acting upon Earth's climate that causes a change in how energy flows through it (such as long-lasting, heat-trapping gases - also known as greenhouse gases). These gases slow outgoing heat in the atmosphere and cause the planet to warm.
Another Gas That Contributes to the Greenhouse Effect:
Water vapor.
Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas, but because the warming ocean increases the amount of it in our atmosphere, it is not a direct cause of climate change. Credit: John Fowler on Unsplash
FEEDBACKS: A process where something is either amplified or reduced as time goes on, such as water vapor increasing as Earth warms leading to even more warming.
Human Activity Is the Cause of Increased Greenhouse Gas Concentrations
Over the last century, burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil has increased the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ). This increase happens because the coal or oil burning process combines carbon with oxygen in the air to make CO 2 . To a lesser extent, clearing of land for agriculture, industry, and other human activities has increased concentrations of greenhouse gases.
The industrial activities that our modern civilization depends upon have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by nearly 50% since 1750 2 . This increase is due to human activities, because scientists can see a distinctive isotopic fingerprint in the atmosphere.
In its Sixth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, composed of scientific experts from countries all over the world, concluded that it is unequivocal that the increase of CO 2 , methane, and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere over the industrial era is the result of human activities and that human influence is the principal driver of many changes observed across the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere.
"Since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact."
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The panel's AR6 Working Group I (WGI) Summary for Policymakers report is online at https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/ .
Evidence Shows That Current Global Warming Cannot Be Explained by Solar Irradiance
Scientists use a metric called Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) to measure the changes in energy the Earth receives from the Sun. TSI incorporates the 11-year solar cycle and solar flares/storms from the Sun's surface.
Studies show that solar variability has played a role in past climate changes. For example, a decrease in solar activity coupled with increased volcanic activity helped trigger the Little Ice Age.
But several lines of evidence show that current global warming cannot be explained by changes in energy from the Sun:
- Since 1750, the average amount of energy from the Sun either remained constant or decreased slightly 3 .
- If a more active Sun caused the warming, scientists would expect warmer temperatures in all layers of the atmosphere. Instead, they have observed a cooling in the upper atmosphere and a warming at the surface and lower parts of the atmosphere. That's because greenhouse gases are slowing heat loss from the lower atmosphere.
- Climate models that include solar irradiance changes can’t reproduce the observed temperature trend over the past century or more without including a rise in greenhouse gases.
1. IPCC 6 th Assessment Report, WG1, Summary for Policy Makers, Sections A, “ The Current State of the Climate ”
IPCC 6 th Assessment Report, WG1, Technical Summary, Sections TS.1.2, TS.2.1 and TS.3.1
2. P. Friedlingstein, et al., 2022: “Global Carbon Budget 2022”, Earth System Science Data ( 11 Nov 2022): 4811–4900. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-4811-2022
3. IPCC 6 th Assessment Report, WG1, Chapter 2, Section 2.2.1, “ Solar and Orbital Forcing ” IPCC 6 th Assessment Report, WG1, Chapter 7, Sections 7.3.4.4, 7.3.5.2, Figure 7.6, “ Solar ” M. Lockwood and W.T. Ball, Placing limits on long-term variations in quiet-Sun irradiance and their contribution to total solar irradiance and solar radiative forcing of climate,” Proceedings of the Royal Society A , 476, issue 2228 (24 June 2020): https://doi 10.1098/rspa.2020.0077
Header image credit: Pixabay/stevepb Four Major Gases image credit: Adobe Stock/Ilya Glovatskiy
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