Global warming is the long-term heating of Earth's surface observed since the pre-industrial period (between 1850 and 1900) due to human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth's atmosphere. This term is not interchangeable with the term "climate change."
What is global warming?
Global warming is the phenomenon of gradual increase in the average temperature of earth . It is caused by the release of greenhouse gases like car...
What do CFCs stand for? What is the role of CFC in global warming?
CFCs stand for chlorofluorocarbons. Ozone layer is responsible for protecting the surface of the earth from the sun’s harmful radiations. CFCs dest...
How does global warming affect climate change?
The change in climatic conditions is a result of global warming. The burning of fossil fuels, cutting down of trees etc. causes the temperature of...
How can we control global warming?
The release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is the major cause of global warming. It can be reduced by setting a h...
Environment
Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in Earths average surface temperature over the past century primarily due to the greenhouse gases released by people burning fossil fuels. Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in Earths average surface temperature over the past century primarily due to the gr…
Climate
- Earth has experienced climate change in the past without help from humanity. But the current climatic warming is occurring much more rapidly than past warming events. As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degre…
Setting
- In Earths history before the Industrial Revolution, Earths climate changed due to natural causes unrelated to human activity. These natural causes are still in play today, but their influence is too small or they occur too slowly to explain the rapid warming seen in recent decades.
Models
- Models predict that as the world consumes ever more fossil fuel, greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to rise, and Earths average surface temperature will rise with them. Based on plausible emission scenarios, average surface temperatures could rise between 2°C and 6°C by the end of the 21st century. Some of this warming will occur even if future greenhouse gas emis…
Impact
- The impact of global warming is far greater than just increasing temperatures. Warming modifies rainfall patterns, amplifies coastal erosion, lengthens the growing season in some regions, melts ice caps and glaciers, and alters the ranges of some infectious diseases. Some of these changes are already occurring.
Mechanism
- Earths temperature begins with the Sun. Roughly 30 percent of incoming sunlight is reflected back into space by bright surfaces like clouds and ice. Of the remaining 70 percent, most is absorbed by the land and ocean, and the rest is absorbed by the atmosphere. The absorbed solar energy heats our planet. As the rocks, the air, and the seas warm, they radiate heat energy (thermal infr…
Function
- When they absorb the energy radiating from Earths surface, microscopic water or greenhouse gas molecules turn into tiny heaters like the bricks in a fireplace, they radiate heat even after the fire goes out. They radiate in all directions. The energy that radiates back toward Earth heats both the lower atmosphere and the surface, enhancing the heating they get from direct sunlight.
Research
- See the Earth Observatorys series Paleoclimatology for details about how scientists study past climates.
Timeline
- Using this ancient evidence, scientists have built a record of Earths past climates, or paleoclimates. The paleoclimate record combined with global models shows past ice ages as well as periods even warmer than today. But the paleoclimate record also reveals that the current climatic warming is occurring much more rapidly than past warming events.
Causes
- These natural causes are still in play today, but their influence is too small or they occur too slowly to explain the rapid warming seen in recent decades. We know this because scientists closely monitor the natural and human activities that influence climate with a fleet of satellites and surface instruments. Scientists theorize that there may be a multi-decadal trend in solar out…
Applications
- Scientists integrate these measurements into climate models to recreate temperatures recorded over the past 150 years. Climate model simulations that consider only natural solar variability and volcanic aerosols since 1750omitting observed increases in greenhouse gasesare able to fit the observations of global temperatures only up until about 1950. After that point, the decadal trend …
Characteristics
- Each cycle exhibits subtle differences in intensity and duration. As of early 2010, the solar brightness since 2005 has been slightly lower, not higher, than it was during the previous 11-year minimum in solar activity, which occurred in the late 1990s. This implies that the Suns impact between 2005 and 2010 might have been to slightly decrease the warming that greenhouse emi…
Purpose
- To further explore the causes and effects of global warming and to predict future warming, scientists build climate modelscomputer simulations of the climate system. Climate models are designed to simulate the responses and interactions of the oceans and atmosphere, and to account for changes to the land surface, both natural and human-induced. They comply with fun…
Example
- Perhaps the most well known feedback comes from melting snow and ice in the Northern Hemisphere. Warming temperatures are already melting a growing percentage of Arctic sea ice, exposing dark ocean water during the perpetual sunlight of summer. Snow cover on land is also dwindling in many areas. In the absence of snow and ice, these areas go from having bright, sun…
Introduction
- The question that scientists ask is, how much water vapor will be in the atmosphere in a warming world? The atmosphere currently has an average equilibrium or balance between water vapor concentration and temperature. As temperatures warm, the atmosphere becomes capable of containing more water vapor, and so water vapor concentrations go up to regain equilibrium. Wil…
Advantages
- The amount of water vapor that enters the atmosphere ultimately determines how much additional warming will occur due to the water vapor feedback. The atmosphere responds quickly to the water vapor feedback. So far, most of the atmosphere has maintained a near constant balance between temperature and water vapor concentration as temperatures have gone up in r…
Effects
- If clouds become brighter, or the geographical extent of bright clouds expands, they will tend to cool Earths surface. Clouds can become brighter if more moisture converges in a particular region or if more fine particles (aerosols) enter the air. If fewer bright clouds form, it will contribute to warming from the cloud feedback.
Formation
- Clouds, like greenhouse gases, also absorb and re-emit infrared energy. Low, warm clouds emit more energy than high, cold clouds. However, in many parts of the world, energy emitted by low clouds can be absorbed by the abundant water vapor above them. Further, low clouds often have nearly the same temperatures as the Earths surface, and so emit similar amounts of infrared en…
Benefits
- If warmer temperatures result in a greater amount of high clouds, then less infrared energy will be emitted to space. In other words, more high clouds would enhance the greenhouse effect, reducing the Earths capability to cool and causing temperatures to warm.
Future
- Scientists arent entirely sure where and to what degree clouds will end up amplifying or moderating warming, but most climate models predict a slight overall positive feedback or amplification of warming due to a reduction in low cloud cover. A recent observational study found that fewer low, dense clouds formed over a region in the Pacific Ocean when temperature…
Example
A: Here's a simple definition of global warming. (And yes, it's really happening.) Over the past 50 years, the average global temperature has increased at the fastest rate in recorded history. And experts see the trend is accelerating: All but one of the 16 hottest years in NASAs 134-year record have occurred since 20…
Issues
- Climate change deniers have argued that there has been a pause or a slowdown in rising global temperatures, but several recent studies, including a 2015 paper published in the journal Science, have disproved this claim. And scientists say that unless we curb global-warming emissions, average U.S. temperatures could increase by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century.
Causes
- A: Global warming occurs when carbon dioxide (CO2) and other air pollutants and greenhouse gases collect in the atmosphere and absorb sunlight and solar radiation that have bounced off the earths surface. Normally, this radiation would escape into spacebut these pollutants, which can last for years to centuries in the atmosphere, trap the heat and ...
Environment
- In the United States, the burning of fossil fuels to make electricity is the largest source of heat-trapping pollution, producing about two billion tons of CO2 every year. Coal-burning power plants are by far the biggest polluters. The countrys second-largest source of carbon pollution is the transportation sector, which generates about 1.7 billion tons of CO2 emissions a year. Curbing d…
Impact
- The earths ocean temperatures are getting warmer, toowhich means that tropical storms can pick up more energy. So global warming could turn, say, a category 3 storm into a more dangerous category 4 storm. In fact, scientists have found that the frequency of North Atlantic hurricanes has increased since the early 1980s, as well as the number of storms that reach categories 4 an…
Future
- Fortunately, state leadersincluding in car country itselfrecognize that clean transportation must remain a priority if we are to address the costly risks of climate change and protect public health. And regional efforts around the country are helping to boost the electric car market, which saw an increase in sales for 2017 over 2016. Our clean energy economy is growing too, despite federal …
Funding
- To help make the deal happen, the Obama administration pledged $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund, an international organization dedicated to helping poor countries adopt cleaner energy technologies. Under the terms of the Paris agreement, participating nations will meet every five years, starting in 2020, to revise their plans for cutting CO2 emissions. Beginning in 2023, they w…
Advantages
- Even better, a new initiative by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg gives the urban layer of this movement a boost. Hes asked mayors from the 100 most populous cities in the country to share their plans for making their buildings and transportation systems run cleaner and more efficiently. The 20 that show the greatest potential for cutting the dangerous carbon polluti…
Prevention
- A: Wondering how to stop global warming? Reduce your own carbon footprint by following a few easy steps. Make conserving energy a part of your daily routine and your decisions as a consumer. When you shop for new appliances like refrigerators, washers, and dryers, look for products with the governments Energy Star label; they meet a higher standard for energy efficie…